Dan is CEO and Chairman of VLSI Research Inc. He is a recognized authority on the semiconductor industry, winning SEMI’s Sales and Marketing Excellence Award (formerly SEMI’s Bob Graham Award) in 2012 for “empowering executives with tremendous strategic and tactical marketing value" through his e-letter, The Chip Insider®; his book Maxims of Hi-Tech, and his many interviews of executives.
He is thought of as “the marketing voice and expert for the industry.” “Dan has methodically captured the essence of the industry and produced it in such a way for all to benefit … He has been such an integral part of the industry for so long, it is difficult to imagine the industry without his contributions.”
His consulting work has included hundreds of successful programs involving product development, launch, and positioning. Dan has a proven track record of developing economic models that accurately predict trends. He is widely known for the forecasting of strategic infrastructure shifts. This includes his early-eighties development of the first factory cost-of-ownership models, multiple wafer size and lithography transitions, the rise of the fabless/foundry model to counter escalating fab costs, the shift of the DRAM memory market from the United States to Japan in the 1980s, then its shifting again to Korea in 1990s, as well as the driving forces behind the rise of Flash Memory.
Dan’s public work on the industry includes two articles for Scientific American challenging predictions of the demise of Moore’s Law by demonstrating how the innate abilities of scientists to innovate have outpaced the doomsayers, and an invited article on the history and economics of Moore’s Law for the SIA. He has also been the keynote or invited speaker at dozens of conferences. His pro bono work has included serving as an advisor on innovation to the White House Council of Economic Advisors, teaching invited courses at Stanford University, and serving on the Board of Advisors to the Extension School at UC Berkeley. Dan holds two patents and a Master’s degree in Economics from San Jose State University. He is a senior member of the IEEE.