Dr. Aart de Geus, Synopsys Executive Chair and Founder, to Receive Semiconductor Industry’s Highest Honor

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The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced Dr. Aart de Geus, Synopsys executive chair and founder, has been selected as the 2024 recipient of SIA’s highest honor, the Robert N. Noyce Award.

SIA presents the Noyce Award annually in recognition of a leader who has made outstanding contributions to the semiconductor industry in technology or public policy. Dr. de Geus will accept the award at the SIA Awards Dinner on Nov. 21, 2024, in San Jose, Calif.

“A universally respected leader and visionary in the semiconductor industry, Aart pioneered groundbreaking electronic design automation (EDA) technology, which provides the software tools central to designing chips,” said John Neuffer, SIA president and CEO. “During a career spanning over four decades, Aart has made immeasurable contributions to our industry and has served as a powerful and influential advocate for our priorities. We are thrilled to recognize him with the 2024 Robert N. Noyce Award for his landmark achievements.”

Dr. de Geus started his career at General Electric in 1982, where he developed foundational tools for design and verification in semiconductors. Synopsys, which Aart founded in 1986, initially developed and broadly commercialized logic synthesis, which automates the creation of digital designs from language descriptions. This capability transitioned Computer-Aided Design (CAD) into the EDA era by enabling and automating decades of enormous, digital complexity scaling, often referred to as Moore’s Law. Aart served as the company’s CEO from 1994 to 2024.

In recognition of his pioneering work, industry impact, and community service, Aart has received numerous honors, including Electronic Business Magazine’s “CEO of the Year” (2002) and “Top 10 Most Influential Executives” (2005), the IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal (2007), the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG) “Spirit of the Valley” Lifetime Achievement Award (2007), the Electronic System Design Association (ESDA) Phil Kaufman Award (2008), the GSA “Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award” (2009), the Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame Award (2013), and an honorary Ph.D. from Glasgow University (2022).

Aart now serves as Executive Chair of Synopsys’ Board of Directors, where he continues to oversee the management of Synopsys business operations.

Aart also serves on the Board of Directors of Applied Materials and is active in the business and local community. He serves on the Boards of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG), the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA), and the Electronic System Design Alliance (ESDA). Aart is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

In 1999, Aart created the Synopsys Outreach Foundation, which promotes project-based science and math learning throughout Silicon Valley, in early recognition of the future shortage of engineering workforce in the high-tech industry. For over 35 years, Synopsys has also actively driven community engagements in its major worldwide locations.

Aart received a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland and a Ph.D. from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

“Receiving the 2024 Noyce Award is a great honor and I’m humbled to be among exceptional individuals recognized for lasting contributions to our uniquely exponential industry,” said de Geus. “Looking back, the shift from CAD to EDA was truly a techonomic watershed that enabled a roughly 10-million-times increase in digital design productivity.”

Aart enthusiastically added: “By fully embracing 3D multi-die integration, semi technology has now graduated from scale- to systemic-complexity! Propelled by the demand-economics of AI, and enabled by amazing, AI-powered design flows, we are fully launched into the next exponential era! It is so energizing to feel the multi-decade opportunity that is surrounding us and to be part of our industry’s collective ingenuity, that makes the impossible, possible… again and again!”

The Noyce Award is named in honor of semiconductor industry pioneer Robert N. Noyce, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel Corporation.