William Billowitch

William D. Billowitch, Agere Systems, Sr. Customer Marketing Manager

Driving out cost, size and power consumption in portable HDD storage

Abstract

Storage chips tailored to the needs of small-form-factor disk drives clearly play a crucial role in meeting the growth opportunities in the portable consumer electronics market. Integrated circuit designs – from read-channels and preamplifiers to controllers and systems-on-a-chip – must focus on reducing cost, size and power consumption to help speed the rollout of magnetic storage solutions for handheld devices. However, the larger issue of reaching the economies of scale that allow chip, drive and systems developers to make money requires architectural approaches and business models not found in traditional storage segments.

Agere’s Joe Borak will discuss new ways to address the cost and power issues in multimedia-based portable products through standardization, integration and repartitioned designs. He will also suggest how greater collaboration with companies at all levels of the supply chain can reduce development time and costs as the dividing line for component and system integration changes.

Biography

William Billowitch is Sr. Customer Marketing Manager for the Storage division of Agere Systems, Inc. Agere is a premier provider of advanced integrated circuit solutions for high-density storage, mobile terminals, cellular base stations, wireless data and multi-service networking applications.

Billowitch is responsible for advancing Agere’s product penetration into new emerging storage customer platform opportunities. With over $500 million in divisional sales, Mr. Billowitch leads the division in search of new business opportunities and strategic planning for storage integration into a wide variety of consumer electronics applications.

Before assuming his current position, Billowitch was Sr. IP Design Reuse & Development Mgr. for Agere with responsibility for ensuring Agere’s timely access to the highest quality semiconductor intellectual property (IP) commercially available, and ensuring that Agere’s internal design engineering processes produce reusable IP.

Billowitch served on the board of the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA) and led the technical direction of the Quality IP (QIP) pillar. Prior to joining Agere in 2002, Mr. Billowitch was Director of Intellectual Property for the design services firm Intrinsix, and before that President and CEO of The VHDL Technology Group (acquired by Intrinsix) and Exec VP Mktg at Quadtree Software Corporation (acquired by Synopsys).

Billowitch graduated with a BSEE from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.