Easics

Easics was founded on the 1st of July 1991 in the city of Leuven, a high-tech region in Belgium. It's a spin-off company from imec and the ESAT department of the KU Leuven. The founders are Dirk Callaerts, Jan Decaluwe, Ivo Vandeweerd and Jan Zegers. The first chairman was professor Roger Van Overstraeten (the founder and first CEO of imec), who was succeeded by professor André Oosterlinck (KU Leuven). The name "Easics" stands for "Engineering ASICs" or "Easy ICs". It is pronounced ["EA" (like in "easy") - "SICS"]. The mission was to provide semiconductor design services for signal processing and telecommunications applications using both FPGA and ASIC technology. From 1991 till 2000, Easics designed multiple innovative and successful ASICs, ASSPs, Gate Arrays and FPGAs, including embedded software, for our customers throughout Europe and the USA. Customers included Alcatel Bell (later Alcatel-Lucent, now Nokia), Philips (now NXP Semiconductors) and Motorola (later Freescale Semiconductor, now NXP Semiconductors). Applications included telecommunications, digital signal processing, aerospace, industrial and consumer electronics. In 2000, Easics was acquired by TranSwitch, a wireline telecommunications semiconductor supplier, headquartered in Shelton (Connecticut, USA). From 2000 till 2004, Easics was a wholly owned research and development center of TranSwitch, designing world-class telecommunication chips and IP cores, and working closely together with teams in the USA, India, Switzerland, France and Israel. In December 2004, a Management Buy-out took place, initiated by Ramses Valvekens and Steven Coenen, both technical managers during the TranSwitch years. In this transaction, TranSwitch (previously 100% owner of Easics) has sold all shares of Easics. Tim Morlion and Bart Gybels, Easics project leaders, stayed on board. Two of the company founders, Jan Zegers and Jan Decaluwe, and its former chairman of the board, professor André Oosterlinck, rejoined the board of directors in 2005. Since December 2004, Easics is again an independent and privately owned company.