Smooth-Stone Builds Momentum, Including Key Executive Hires; Adopts New Company Name of Calxeda

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Exactly three months after its $48 million funding announcement, Smooth-Stone today detailed its company momentum, including significant new executive hires, new office space and renaming the company.  The new name, Calxeda, pronounced "Cal-zeh-dah," is a derivative of the Latin for "Smooth-Stone."  Calxeda is on track with its business and ARM-based product development plans, moving toward providing first samples of its industry-changing technologies in 2011.  

"According to Gartner, nearly 60% of datacenters point to power as their greatest facility problem, whether due to excessive heat generation or insufficient power.  Next-generation datacenters must pay particular attention to energy-efficient computing platforms such as the approach taken by Calxeda," said Professor Wu Feng of the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, noted expert in green innovation technology, renowned inventor of Green Destiny and founder of The Green500 List of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world.

Calxeda's business purpose is to remove barriers to innovation by supplying super-efficient technologies that deliver the performance businesses and institutions need, with an order of magnitude improvement in energy and space efficiency.  

"We believe the solution requires this order of magnitude improvement, literally ten times the energy efficiency, for half the price," said Calxeda CEO, Barry Evans.  "This is within our reach with technologies we are developing at Calxeda. The response from customers and technology partners validates we are onto something big.  The talented individuals joining our team, as announced today, provide further validation."

Today, Calxeda announces three significant executive team additions:

• Karl Freund, formerly of IBM and Hewlett-Packard, as Vice President of Marketing
• Bob Baughman, previously with Polycom and Marvell, as Vice President of Business Development and Sales
• Steve Beatty, Vice President of Manufacturing, brings his experience from Freescale and SigmaTel.

"The industry needs a new clock, not just another tick or tock. Mere modest improvements in efficiency will not remove the barriers to innovation that frustrate clients today.  That's why I came to Calxeda: to help turn this vision into a reality," said Freund.  

At Calxeda, Freund will lead strategic market planning, market requirements, positioning, launches and market development efforts to support Calxeda's business plans. Freund brings 30 years of Server market experience to Calxeda.  He spent the last 10 years in various senior marketing positions at IBM, acting as Vice President of WW marketing in the Tivoli, Unix Power Systems and Mainframe business units.  Before IBM, Freund had similar roles in SGI, Cray and Hewlett-Packard.

Baughman is Calxeda's new Vice President of Business Development and Sales.  Over a 25 year career, Baughman has gained experience in leading worldwide sales organizations, brings expertise in full life cycle product management, proven revenue creation and growth management including taking a start up from zero to $1.6 billion, and shepherding companies through all phases from start up launch to IPO to acquisition. Baughman was most recently with Polycom where he was Vice President, Product Management of a $700 million revenue video solutions group, and was key in managing Polycom's strategic partnership with Microsoft. Before that, Baughman was with Marvell and Intel, joining the latter after nine years at Dialogic Corporation, which was acquired by Intel in mid 1999.

Beatty, as Vice President of Manufacturing, brings 18 years manufacturing and business operations experience to Calxeda.  He was previously Senior Vice President, responsible for product lines and manufacturing operations, at SigmaTel through its 2003 IPO and then acquisition by Freescale. Before that, Beatty was with Motorola, and previously served in active duty in the U.S. Naval Nuclear Power Program.

Calxeda has also moved into a new corporate headquarters in Austin, space that enables its expansion plans, and has launched a new website to accompany the new company naming.

About Calxeda

Founded in January 2008, Calxeda, formerly Smooth-Stone, brings unseen performance density to the datacenter on a very attractive power foot print by leveraging ultra-low power processors as used on mobile phones as a foundation for its revolutionary technology.  Calxeda will make it possible for datacenter managers to increase the density of their computer resources while significantly reducing the need for power, space and cooling. At the same time, Calxeda technology will contribute to the reduction of the CO2 footprint of the data center in a significant way.  Calxeda is funded by a unique syndicate comprising industry leading venture capital firms and semiconductor innovators, including ARM, Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Highland Capital Partners and Texas Instruments Inc.  See www.calxeda.com for more information.

SOURCE Calxeda