The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Ex-Altera CEO killed in bike accident

FPGA pioneer mourned

Join our expert panel in discussing application security

Former Altera chief Rodney Smith died last week after being struck by a car.

Smith, 67, was riding his bike on the famed Sand Hill Road when he was apparently hit by an 87-year-old driver, according to a report in the Mercury News. Police are investigating the incident and have yet to assign fault to either party.

Smith started at Altera - a maker of FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) - in 1983 and spent 17 years as CEO. He retired as Chairman of the company in 2003.

"He had great energy and he was a strong leader," Altera said in a statement. "With his many interests and his attention to detail, he brought a breadth of important experience to the new company."

According to the Merc, Smith and his wife Mary have funded and taken part in clean-up efforts along the very stretch of road where he was killed. ®

Tune into our application security webcast, click here

Don’t Miss

NovellSUSE 11 takes off faster than 10

Novell still cool to KVM

Samsung SpinPoint 2.5in HDDFreecom adds RFID to HDD

Innovative feature or unnecessary security?

Intel X25-MIntel to double SSD capacity

Roadmap brought forward by a quarter

MacBook Air firmware update points to revamped batteries