Dr. Chris Rowen is President and Chief Executive Officer of Tensilica.  He founded Tensilica in July 1997 to develop automatic generation of  application-specific microprocessors for high-volume communication and consumer systems.  He was a pioneer in the development of RISC architecture at Stanford in the early 80s and helped start MIPS Computer Systems Inc. in 1984, where he served as Vice President for Microprocessor Development. Most recently, he was Vice President and General Manager of the Design Reuse Group of Synopsys Incorporated.  He received a B.A. in physics from Harvard University and M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.