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Mr. Pihl has served as Chairman Chief Executive Officer and President of MathStar since he founded it in 1997. Mr. Pihl is an electrical engineer and has over 42 years' experience in the computer industry with extensive responsibilities in design product planning and management. The focus of his work has been on the opening of new markets through the unique combinations of innovative new technologies. His early career was launched at entrepreneurial start-ups (Data Display Data 100) where Mr. Pihl held increasingly responsible positions in engineering and management. In 1979 Mr. Pihl co-founded Lee Data (which changed its name to Apertus Inc. and then to Carleton Corporation and now is part of Oracle Corporation) as Senior Vice President of Research and Development. In this position he was responsible for leading both the hardware and software development teams and creating advanced computer terminal systems for centralized computing environments. Mr. Pihl went on to found NetStar Inc. where he created the world's first multigigabit switched IP router for distributed computing environments. NetStar's products were early entrants in the market for the emerging Internet infrastructure. Mr. Pihl took NetStar through three levels of private financing and its initial public offering in October 1995. In August 1996 NetStar was acquired by Ascend Communications Inc. (now Lucent) for $300 million. In 1996 Mr. Pihl co-founded RocketCHiPS Inc. a developer of high-speed silicon CMOS integrated circuits and related intellectual property aimed at the high-speed wired and wireless communications markets. He served as RocketCHiPS' Chairman and Chief Financial Officer until the company was sold to Xilinx Inc. for approximately $300 million in November 2000. Since August 1997 Mr. Pihl has served as Chairman of Vital Images Inc. a publicly-held developer of 3D volume rendering software for the medical industry. He served as Vital Images' Chief Executive Officer from February 1998 to January 2000. Mr. Pihl is currently a board member for Vital Images and Plain Sight Systems.
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