Vinod Dham joins start-up as CEO

Vinod Dham, the 47-year-old semiconductor executive from AMD and Intel, has joined semiconductor start-up Silicon Spice as president and chief executive officer, and the company has received new financing from a group that includes venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

The second-round financing raised $7 million. The first round raised $3.3 million, and investors included New Enterprise Associates, World View Technology Partners, and Chemicals and Materials Enterprise Associates.

"Vinod could have gone virtually anywhere, with his track record and reputation," Gary Banta, vice president of marketing for Silicon Spice, said in a statement. "The fact that he chose to join us over many other offers speaks volumes about the opportunity here."

Vinod's compensation package was not disclosed; it likely is based on the prospect of Silicon Spice going public, a typical scenario in the high-tech industry. In another example of a well-known executive joining a start-up, former Apple Computer chief technology officer Ellen Hancock recently joined Exodus Communications, which then went public.

"Silicon Spice is developing a radically new signal processing technology," Dham said. "I chose to join Silicon Spice due to the enormous potential if offers."

Dham was one of the top executives of AMD's flagship K6 chip. He left AMD last November for "personal reasons." At Intel, he was one of the designers of the Pentium chip.