Suhas S. Patil

An entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Suhas S. Patil founded Cirrus Logic, a fabless semiconductor company. Over the years, his work covered computer architecture, parallel processing computers, mathematics for computer science, design methodology for very large integrated circuits, and IC design automation software. He authored over 40 scientific papers covering these areas of research and was also the recipient of several patents in the field of integrated circuits.

Patil was born in Jamshedpur, India. He received his B. Tech (Honors) in Electronics and Electrical Communications from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in 1965, and his M.S.EE degree from MIT. He received his Doctor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1970.

From 1970 until 1975, he served as Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While at MIT, Patil also served as Assistant Director of Project MAC (Multi-Access Computer), the largest computer science laboratory in the U.S., where the timesharing computer system was developed. At MIT, he worked in the area of Computer Architecture and related topics.

In 1975 he moved to the University of Utah, where he became a pioneer in applying his knowledge of computer architecture to the new world of Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) — the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistors into a single chip. The microprocessor is a VLSI device. He received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from IIT Kharagpur along with Dr. Abdul Kalam (former President of India) in 1995. Patil was the first to receive the Entrepreneurial Achievement Award from PanIIT in 2009.

He founded Patil Systems, Inc. (1981) in Salt Lake City, which was renamed Cirrus Logic in 1984 when it moved to Silicon Valley. He served as Chairman Emeritus of Cirrus Logic from 1997. Patil also served as Chairman of Digit7, Inc., which was earlier named Tufan Infotech, and as Chairman and CEO of Cradle Technologies, a Silicon Valley company that made advanced networked video surveillance products. He also served on the Boards of The Tech Museum and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.

He co-founded a global not-for-profit organization, TiE — The Ind-US Entrepreneurs, in 1992, together with successful entrepreneurs and businessmen of Indian origin in Silicon Valley, for nurturing and mentoring entrepreneurs and young companies. Patil served as TiE's first President. He was an angel investor in numerous start-ups, including Vitalect.

As a gift to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he awarded $1.5 million for the construction of the Suhas and Jayashree Patil Conference Center at the Stata Center. He also served on the Board of Trustees of The Computer History Museum, The Tech Museum, and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.