Art Swift Named President of prpl Foundation

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 9, 2014) - Art Swift has been named president of the open-source, non-profit prpl Foundation. He succeeds Amit Rohatgi, who will continue to serve as an advisor to the Foundation.

"Art brings to the Foundation more than 20 years of marketing and executive management for semiconductor and processor IP companies which will be invaluable as the organization matures and grows," said Rohatgi. "He has a long-time familiarity with MIPS and other processor architectures, and prpl will benefit from Art's expertise in building relationships with global technology companies."

"prpl is helping to foster innovation in areas from Internet of Things (IoT) hubs to Big Data to cloud computing and more," said Swift. "Across these areas, there are major challenges such as security, virtualization and software portability that must be addressed by industry working together around open solutions. The member companies of prpl are leveraging combined resources and expertise for the benefit of a broad community of developers, businesses and consumers."

Swift has spent most of the last two decades building innovative chips and IP for the mobile PC, tablet and smartphone industries. He served as CEO of low power chipmaker Transmeta (NASDAQ, TMTA) which employed Linux creator Linus Torvalds prior to his move to the Linux Foundation; CEO of nanotech innovator Unidym; VP of marketing and business development at MIPS Technologies (acquired by Imagination); president of ISDCorp, a supplier of Linux engineering services to Fortune 500 companies; and chief operating officer for Lynuxworks, provider of the BlueCat Linux distribution and the LynxOS Linux-compatible real-time operating system.

Most recently, Swift has been focused on technologies required to bring enterprise class security to consumer grade mobile devices. 

"With the growing use of the BYOD model for enterprise mobility, and the dramatic increase in targeted attacks and associated confidential data breaches, the need for improved mobile device security has become paramount," said Swift. "Furthermore, many of the security lessons we're learning in the mobile arena will have direct applicability to IoT. The participation by prpl members in helping to drive and codify IOT security approaches presents a great opportunity, both from a business and technical perspective, and will have tremendous value to the IOT industry at large."

Swift holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Pennsylvania State University; he is a co-inventor of three U.S. patents and has raised more than $100 million through public/private equity offerings. Swift serves on the board of Numascale AS, a European supplier of hardware solutions for Big Data apps, and the Foothill DeAnza Foundation, an education-focused non-profit. He also serves as CEO of CUPP Computing AS, a European supplier of mobile security devices. 

About prpl Foundation
prpl (pronounced "Purple") is an open-source, community-driven, collaborative, non-profit foundation targeting and supporting the MIPS architecture -- and open to others -- with a focus on enabling next-generation datacenter-to-device portable software and virtualized architectures. prpl represents leaders in the technology industry investing in innovation in efficiency, portability and compatibility for the good of a broad community of developers, businesses and consumers. Initial domains targeted by prpl include datacenter, networking & storage, connected consumer and embedded/IoT. Members include: Broadcom, Cavium, Ikanos, Imagination Technologies, Ineda, Ingenic, Lantiq, PMC and Qualcomm. See: www.prplfoundation.org.