RapidIO Trade Association
Phone: 512-401-2900
For release: 16 Dec 2013
December 16, 2013
Austin, Texas
The RapidIO® Trade Association (RTA) announced today that it has appointed Rick O’Connor as the new Executive Director of the organization. The RapidIO Trade Association’s next generation development is positioned for growth opportunities in wired and wireless communications technologies along with the global focus on low latency efficient data centers and high performance computing.
Mr. O’Connor is a proven technology executive with close to 30 years of experience. His career has been focused on leading-edge product & business development with emphasis in the areas of strategy formulation and execution, technology investments, and new product development and introduction. Over Rick’s career, he has launched dozens of products accounting for over $500 million in revenues.
Rick brings to the RTA a unique combination of business and technical skills and he has particular strengths in market development; extensive technology and system level knowledge; new product development from concept to deployment; and he has extensive contacts across the industry. Rick has strong interpersonal & presentation skills and is a regular speaker at key industry forums with frequent interaction with industry analysts.
“As one of the original founding members of the RapidIO Trade Association, I am honored to have the opportunity to reengage with the RapidIO community. Market opportunities have never been better for RapidIO as the worldwide growth of wired and wireless communications technologies and the growing focus on efficient data centers creates tremendous new growth opportunities for the RapidIO interconnect technology and for the Trade Association member companies” said Rick O’Connor. “I am also keenly interested in extending the performance of RapidIO technology from 40 Gbps to 100 Gbps and beyond as we target high performance computing and cloud based computing within data center applications”.
“The RTA Steering Committee is excited to welcome Rick O’Connor back into the trade associaton as our new Executive Director. We look forward to working with Rick to maximize the market potential of our next generation 10xN standard. This is a perfect opportunity for RapidIO to expand on our success in wireless base stations and enter new areas such as data center and cloud computing applications,” said Paul Carson, Chairman of the RTA Steering Committee and Director of IP Development, Processor Division at Texas Instruments.
Rick was a founder and played a key role in the overall growth of Tundra Semiconductor serving as the company’s CTO while driving overall corporate strategy and technology investments. Earlier in his career, Rick worked as a Project Engineer in the Avionics industry and as a Design Engineer in the Aerospace industry. Rick received an Executive MBA degree in 1996 from the University of Ottawa. In 1984, he graduated with honors from the faculty of Electronics Engineering Technology at Algonquin College.
About the RapidIO Trade Association:
The RapidIO Trade Association, a non-profit corporation controlled by its members, directs the future development and drives the adoption of the RapidIO architecture. The RapidIO architecture promises lower-latency, increased bandwidth efficiency, lower cost and lower power. Interested companies are invited to join the RapidIO Trade Association to gain access to the standards development process. Detailed information on the RapidIO specification, products, design tools, member companies, and membership is available at www.RapidIO.org.