SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 24, 2021 — Palma Ceia SemiDesign, a fabless semiconductor company specializing in wireless connectivity solutions, announced it has named Nicky Wilkinson director IC Engineering. Wilkinson reports to Executive Vice President, Program Management Kevin Steptoe.
“Nicky brings to Palma Ceia a history of developing advanced semiconductor products and delivering them to market,” Steptoe said. “Her diverse background, which ranges from designing custom ICs for space exploration to creating products for a range of connectivity applications, is a great benefit for Palma Ceia.”
Wilkinson was most recently director IC Engineering for Huawei R&D, where her accomplishments included managing a design team that delivered a full NB-IoT (narrow-band Internet of Things) chipset solution, from analysis of marketing requirements through to production-quality silicon.
Earlier experience includes work at Cambridge Silicon Radio, where she had technical management and line management responsibilities. At CSR she served as senior analogue and RF design engineer, and later group leader for the Bluetooth family of devices and project lead for every new generation of Bluetooth and multi-standard radio device.
Wilkinson also co-founded Neul, where she applied her design and leadership skills to software-defined radio architectures to add features such as GPS positioning to NB-IoT solutions, providing highly integrated, cost-competitive solutions with significant value-added market attraction.
She holds BA, MA, and MEng degrees in Electrical and Information Sciences from the University of Cambridge.
“Palma Ceia’s push to deliver advanced connectivity chips for the Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi HaLow standards makes it an exciting time to be part of the company,” Wilkinson said. “Our team is focused on delivering products for these new standards, which will only grow in demand as new applications arise to take advantage of them.”