Our history

Our history

  • 1991
    easics_history
    easics was founded on the 1st of July 1991 in the city of Leuven, a high-tech region in Belgium. It's a spin-off company from imec and the ESAT department of the KU Leuven, the most innovative university in Europe (read more in this blogpost). The founders are Dirk Callaerts, Jan Decaluwe, Ivo Vandeweerd and Jan Zegers. The first chairman was professor Roger Van Overstraeten (the founder and first CEO of imec), who was succeeded by professor André Oosterlinck (KU Leuven). The name "easics" stands for "Engineering ASICs" or "easy ICs". It is pronounced ["EA" (like in "easy") - "SICS"]. The mission was to provide semiconductor design services for signal processing and telecommunications applications using both FPGA and ASIC technology.
  • 2000
    TranSwitch
    From 1991 till 2000, easics designed multiple innovative and successful ASICs, ASSPs, Gate Arrays and FPGAs, including embedded software, for our customers throughout Europe and the USA. Customers included Alcatel Bell (later Alcatel-Lucent, now Nokia), Philips (now NXP Semiconductors) and Motorola (later Freescale Semiconductor, now NXP Semiconductors). Applications included telecommunications, digital signal processing, aerospace, industrial and consumer electronics. In 2000, easics was acquired by TranSwitch, a wireline telecommunications semiconductor supplier, headquartered in Shelton (Connecticut, USA).
  • 2004
    management
    From 2000 till 2004, easics was a wholly owned research and development center of TranSwitch, designing world-class telecommunication chips and IP cores, and working closely together with teams in the USA, India, Switzerland, France and Israel. In December 2004, a management buy-out took place, initiated by Ramses Valvekens and Steven Coenen, both technical managers during the TranSwitch years. In this transaction, TranSwitch (previously 100% owner of easics) has sold all shares of easics. Tim Morlion and Bart Gybels, Easics project leaders, stayed on board. Its former chairman of the board, professor André Oosterlinck, rejoined the board of directors in 2005. Since December 2004, easics is again an independent and privately owned company.
  • 2021
    NextGearGIMPcropped
    easics switches into its next gear as a company. Next to providing unique competence and development platforms that lead to first-time right, reliable and optimized logic and software that is maintainable by the customer, easics starts providing network and Artificial Intelligence (AI) product/IP solutions for system developers of health and industrial products. To enable this growth ambition Emiliano D’Agostino joined the MT as managing director & CEO of easics as of April 2021.
  • 2022
    History_nearbAI
    easics launches nearbAI™ semiconductor IP cores for extended reality (XR) devices that will set the standard for extreme edge AI performance and immersive experiences.
    Read the story