Our name is inspired by the Latin word valar (courage) and the term covalent bonds which are very strong chemical bonds formed by the sharing of electrons between atoms.
Our belief is that challenging work can best be accomplished by very strong teams who have the courage and perseverance to find solutions. Effective teams have tight bonds between the diverse individuals in the group who trust each other to do their jobs, but more importantly, trust each other enough to be comfortable to ask for help. They communicate well and support each other so they are capable of delivering complex projects on time, within specifications and on a budget.
The team leader understands that when conflicts arise, it is important to be brave and address the issue directly as a breakdown in team relationships lowers the team effectiveness. Human teams are not machines, but an apt metaphor is that if a gear falls out of place in a machine, the entire machine may stop functioning.
Covalar Core Values
The integrity of our members and our company is absolute. We are trustworthy in all aspects. We treat others kindly, as we expect to be treated.
We leverage our strength as a unit working as teams rather than disjointed groups of individuals. We communicate openly, resolve issues directly to maintain cohesiveness and provide a positive work environment.
Our members continuously learn while striving to become better global citizens. Our knowledge, attitude and diversity are our fundamental strengths.
We seek transactions that provide an even greater profit to the other party. We thereby build long term relationships with healthy, successful customers and partners.
We question and seek to improve upon the status quo. We have the courage to pursue revolutionary solutions conceived by innovative thinking.
We seek to create, nurture and market new solutions via the entrepreneurial ventures of our members.
Our Vision & Mission
Covalar Vision
To become the best and most comprehensive provider of analog, mixed-signal and RF engineering solutions and services.
Covalar Mission
To provide our customers unsurpassed service in analog, mixed-signal and RF design, verification, layout, validation, testing, cost reduction, embedded firmware and applications leading to customer success. To provide our Employees an environment which encourages individual technical excellence, winning as a team and taking on entrepreneurial challenges.
Covalar History
TestChip Technologies commenced operations in 1994; the first company founded by our leader, Mark Harward. TestChip was one of the first technology services firms to demonstrate the efficiencies that could be provided to the customer by a highly focused engineering team armed with expert custom software. TestChip was highly successful at its mission of accelerating its customers’ wafer fabrication process technology development.
Covalar was founded as the IC design subsidiary of TestChip. When TestChip struggled to find and hire sufficient numbers of engineers in the late 1990s, Harward reached out to his past TI colleague, Dr. S.S.Mahant-Shetti to see if he would be interested in starting a design and training center in India with the mission of building skilled engineers who could help TestChip/Covalar succeed. Then with Covalar’s funding, KarMic Training Centre was founded in 1999 and KarMic Design started in 2000 when the first batch of engineers emerged from the rigorous training program. When TestChip shareholders decided to sell in 2002, the buyer was not interested in the KarMic Centres which had not yet attained positive cash flow, so rather than see them shut, Harward bought them out of the deal and set them up to run independently and KarMic subsequently became the prime mover in Analog/Power engineering services in India. The Covalar Design engineering team in the USA then designed a series of first pass silicon success projects. The Covalar and KarMic teams worked together on projects that ranged from hard-core analog biomedical chips to advanced power management chips.
Harward became the founding CEO of fabless design company Syndiant in 2005, allowing the Covalar team to focus on high-resolution small pixel micro-displays with associated controller FPGAs and ASICs. The team consistently attained first pass silicon success while becoming an expert at FPGA, PCB design/layout, specialized test, yield enhancement, reliability/product qualification and application software development. The Syndiant technology is very much alive and still may prove to be the enabling key to low power, high resolution next generation personal wearable displays.
Covalar returned to its original name in 2016 after operating as KarMic Americas for several years.
Covalar Management Team
Mark G. Harward
President
Mark has over 25 years in the semiconductor industry. After two years of fantastic technical growth working at UTC-MOSTEK, he spent 8 years at Texas Instruments (TI), first working in the R&D Group’s VLSI Design Labs where he helped validate the World’s first 4Mb DRAM, investigating the reliability physics and lifetime assessment of the very novel vertical trench memory cell in which the capacitor and pass gate were fabricated in the same deep trench. He developed statistical data analysis for new process technologies that enabled improved decision-making while contributing development of DRAM & SRAM memory cells, BiCMOS SRAM and BiCMOS Gate Array. He worked closely with Dr. S.S. Mahant-Shetti to implement improved automation software for test structure design, documentation and test generation to allow faster technology development.
Harward then managed new product development in the Semiconductor Group’s Application Specific Products business. In 1989, Harward formed a team at TI Bangalore to develop architecture development and evaluation software for an FPGA development program he was leading. This successful team was led by Mr. Mahesh Mehendale, today a TI Fellow and the top ranked technical employee in the TI-India organization. Harward successfully managed teams located in California, Texas, Scotland and India. He carefully studied how to minimize the time required to go from design start to tape out and then deployed a detailed project plan which successfully cut this time by 50% while achieving first-pass silicon success on the first design with the new architecture.
Harward has been a serial entrepreneur since founding TestChip Technologies in 1994, which focused on automating the development of test chips used in silicon technology development, serving as its President and CEO until 2002 when the company was acquired. He was able to bootstrap finance the company with only $115K by helping an Indian entrepreneur to start a software development company which served as TestChip’s development partner from 1994 till TestChip was acquired. Harward lived in Mumbai to work directly with the software team until a functioning compiler for GDSii layout, documentation and test programs was completed. While at TestChip Technologies, he and Dr. S.S. Mahant-Shetti co-founded Karnataka Microelectronic (KarMic) Design Centre, Pvt. Ltd., in 1999, an India-based company focused on the design of analog and mixed-signal ICs. Harward has been a frequent traveler to India since 1989.
Harward and Lou Hutter have partnered since 2013 on a strategy to establish the world’s best specialty wafer foundry focused on Analog and Power technologies. They have been overseas for over 100 days each year as they have traveled to Japan, Europe, Asia and the USA to develop keen interest on the part of prospective customers, technology partners, strategic investors, eco-system partners and the world’s leading fab construction firms.
In addition, he was the founding CEO for Syndiant, a fabless design company focused on a small pixel, high-resolution micro-display technology from 2004 until 2013.
Mark has 14 U.S. patents, has co-authored more than 20 articles, has an MSEE from Southern Methodist University and is a Senior Member of the IEEE.
Prasad Kotra
Director, Strategic Relationships and Operations
Prasad has over 20 years of experience in the Semiconductor industry
Prasad has worked tirelessly on behalf of Covalar’s Customers and Partners to increase their success since 2013. Prior to this he served KarMic Design as Operations Manager and Site Manager in Manipal. Prasad has demonstrated his ability to serve the customer on multiple high profile MNC clients managing Projects/CRM/Resource Planning/Human Resource. His work has enabled multi-million dollar revenues in offshore Design Development Centre (ODC) and On-Site operations both in India/US. Most importantly, he strives to improve customer satisfaction as well as the career satisfaction of our engineers.
Prior to Karmic, he served Texas Instruments for 14 years as an ASIC Designer/COT Apps Engineer/Physical Designer (High Profile Wireless Customer) for over fourteen years working from Dallas TX.
Prasad holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from New Mexico State University and a BS in Electronics Engineering from Nagpur University (India). Prasad is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).
Ethics and the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition
The Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (“EICC”) Code of Conduct is a great way for the electronics industry to encourage its members to behave in an ethical manner. To learn the EICC code, please click on the link below: https://www.responsiblebusiness.org/code-standards-and-accountability/. We are committed to complying with the EICC code of conduct and will conduct a refresher training course on the EICC code on a regular basis. Our employees are empowered and requested to identify areas in which we can improve. We will encourage our electronics industry vendors to also comply with the EICC code of conduct.
Environmental, Safety and Health (ESH)
Covalar is committed to conducting our business in a manner that protects the health and safety of our employees, customers, contractors and vendors by complying with all applicable regulations and customer requirements. This is good for business as a healthy and safe workforce will be more productive and will deliver higher quality services. Covalar is also committed to conducting business in a manner that protects the environment in the communities in which we live and work.
The Covalar ESH policies define the principles by which we conduct our operations wherever any of us are working. We apply these ESH practices throughout the Company and address any reported ESH events and implement corrective action plans and/or updated policies when needed. We will encourage our vendors to have active ESH policies and practices.
We often work at various locations around the globe. As such, it is important that each of us understand that we all share the Earth’s environment and must clearly see ourselves collectively and individually as global citizens, who in the normal course of our lives make a positive contribution to the shared ecosystem of Earth upon which each of our lives depends on.
Covalar is firmly committed to:
- Protecting the health, safety and security of our people at all times.
- Proactively making the workplace safer and more secure to prevent accidents.
- Measuring workplace safety by recording and reporting all ESH events so corrective actions can be implemented.
- Plan for and prepare to deal with workplace emergencies.
- Minimize our environmental impact through conservation of resources and strive to offset our carbon impact by such actions as regularly planting trees and supporting others to plant trees.