Professionally

My resume is available on LinkedIn.

I am a professional angel investor and patent strategist.

I have worked for 7 startups and small companies, two that I co-founded. My companies have been sued for patent infringement and lost, sued and won, and avoided being sued. I built a small patent portfolio that was sold for $50M and a large one that supported late-stage financing at 100x revenue.

I am currently looking for deals in AI, biotech, and SaaS types of business. But I will consider any company that looks like it has an unusually good chance of an unusually good return. In the past, I have led engineering, sales, marketing, and patenting in chip design, video signal processing, natural language, and AI software.

As an investor, I offer patenting help to portfolio companies and some others. That can include harvesting inventions, drafting and prosecution, patentability searching, and due diligence on validity and market value.

Personally

I seek to broaden my horizons. I often learn everything that I can about something new. Wikipedia is my favorite web site. I enjoy technical writing and teaching because that's the best way to learn a subject thoroughly.

I love that I have diverse friends and acquaintances. I view strangers as friends that I have yet to meet. I enjoy helping others. I will take either side for the sake of a good debate.

I enjoy cycling and tend a fine garden. I watch live theater but not television. I like cloudy weather and wind. I am selective about what organizations I join.

I love to travel, have spent time in most US states and many nations, and have a friend in each one. Though I wander, I spend most of my time in Silicon Valley.

I enjoy trying new languages, but I know only one fluently. Lately, I am studying Mandarin and reading traditional Chinese characters. I enjoy limericks, wordplay, thoughtful sayings, and general trivia. I like studying maps and have a good sense of direction. I drive a stick shift and can back up a trailer.

If your name is Probell, please let me know, especially if you are interested in having an email address ending in @probell.com. Otherwise, just enjoy this site.

Publications

Here is a list of some things that I have written. You can also search for me on Google Scholar and Google Patents.

• Neural Generation of Blocks for Video Coding paper arXiv 2020

• 中小テック企業の特許取得戦略 −シリコンバレーの特許専門家が思う 　日常業務の押さえどころ article Tokugikon 2017

• Patenting for the Small Company – Third Edition book Amazon 2017

• The Rubber Jigsaw Puzzle: Floorplanning for Network-on-chip conference paper SNUG 2015

• Slash SoC power consumption in the interconnect magazine article EDN 2014

• Midpoint at 237 City Council Packet letter to city council San Jose city planning department 2014

• Demand-based Scheduling using NoC Probes conference paper unpublished 2013

• Endianness technical brief unpublished

• Power and Area Benefits of Modular Interconnect Design white paper Arteris web site 2012

• Critical word first or Sequential cache miss refill policy white paper unpublished 2011

• The Growing Cost of Wires white paper ARM Technology Conference 2010

• NoC Advantages for SoC Prototyping on Big FPGA Boards white paper Arteris 2010

• The Conundrum of Peer-to-Peer Video Distribution long article EE Times Signal Processing DesignLine 2010

• MIPS in Handsets – Why Not? article EE Times 2009

• Synergies could trigger a Synopsys-ARM merger article EE Times 2009

• 6 critical keys to IP licensing success article EE Times 2009

• Processor architecture not a factor for low-power mobile systems long article Embedded Systems Design 2009

• Who Killed My Battery? short article DSP DesignLine 2009

• Video processing pipeline design article EE Times DSP DesignLine 2008

• A Designer’s Guide to HD Video Pre- and Post-Processing white paper Tensilica 2008

• Truly Understanding Low-Power Multimedia Chip Design conference presentation Portable Design Conference 2008

• Frame Processing Time Deviations in Video Processors white paper Tensilica 2008

• Selecting Video IP for SOC Design: Ask the Tough Questions webcast EDN 2007

• Letter to the editor: IP pros, cons magazine article EE Times 2007

• Minimizing Power Consumption in a Mobile Video Subsystem magazine article Portable Design 2007

• A Brief History of Video Coding white paper ARC 2007

• Memory bandwidth metrics for video processing magazine article DSP DesignLine

• Ghosts of Video Processors Past, Present, and Future magazine article unpublished 2006

• ARCHITECTURES: Multimedia platform stresses flexibility magazine article quotation EE Times 2006

• Integrating IP in Multicore DSP/Processor SoCs conference panel Global Signal Processing Conference 2006

• System Design Tricks for Low-Power Video Processing conference presentation Global Signal Processing Conference 2006

• System Design Tricks for Low-Power Video Processing conference paper Global Signal Processing Conference 2006

• Architecture Considerations for Multi-Format Programmable Video Processors journal article IEEE Journal of Signal Processing Systems for Signal, Image, and Video Technology 2006

• Architecture Considerations for Multi-Format Programmable Video Processors conference paper Picture Coding Symposium 2006

• The Trade-Offs of Software Programmability in Video Processors conference panel DesignCon 2005

• Processor system that allows for simultaneous access by multiple requestors to a target with multiple ports patent application US Patent & Trademark Office 2005

• Data movement within a processor patent application US Patent & Trademark Office 2005

• Digital Video to Come Alive in 2005 (article text) magazine article TechOnLine 2004

• What Choices Make a Killer Video Processor Architecture (presentation slides) conference presentation Global Signal Processing Conference 2004

• What Choices Make a Killer Video Processor Architecture (presentation slides with audio narration) conference presentation Global Signal Processing Conference 2004

• What Choices Make a Killer Video Processor Architecture (published paper) conference paper Global Signal Processing Conference 2004

• Processor Architecture for High Performance Video Decode (article text) article Video/Imaging DesignLine 2004

• The Ultra Data UD3000: A Next Generation Video Processor Core conference presentation Embedded Processor Forum 2004

• Improving Application Performance with Instruction Set Architecture Extensions to Embedded Processors conference paper DesignCon 2004

• LX5380 RISC-DSP for New Internet Applications conference presentation Microprocessor Forum 2001

• Considerations for the Design of a Reusable SOC Hardware/Software Development Board magazine article ICD Magazine 2001

• Verification of Lexra Processor Cores conference presentation DesignCon 2000

• High-Performance RISC-DSP for IP Licensing conference presentation Microprocessor Forum 1999

• Identifying Bacteria by Spectral Analysis research report Westinghouse Science Talent Search 1994