Alain Verdier

Experience

• 

  Neotronics Ltd

  Sept 1989 - Jan 1990

  R&D Engineer

  Contributed to the development of a gas detector, digital and analog electronic design from specification to test and validation

• 

  Thomson CSF

  Jan 1990 - Jan 1996

  Development of a PAL/NTSC standards converter:Specified the hardware architecture and managed the development of a “cost reduced” standards converter (2nd generation)Leaded a team of 5 people mainly hardware people.This product has been included in the THOMSON Broadcast (now Grass Valley) product line and massively used in major sports events: first time at Atlanta Olympic Games Contributed to the development of first generation of standards converter: designed 3 PCB implementing digital video processing for PAL to NTSC conversion. Design based on FPGA and custom ASIC.

  • Project Leader

    Sept 1993 - Jan 1996

  • R&D Engineer

    Jan 1990 - Jan 1993
• 

  THOMSON MULTIMEDIA

  Sept 1996 - Jan 2009

  Architected the HDTV multi-standard video decoder IP for the “Montgomery” IC (single chip STB IC in TSMC 90nm technology) and leaded a team up to 10 people including hardware and firmware developers in an international environment and close relationship with other Thomson sites in Indianapolis and Beijing.A technical challenge to achieve a cost effective solution for real time HDTV H264 video decoding. Definition and optimization of the decoder architecture based on RISC&VLIW processors and SIMD arrays: customization of instruction set, hardware/software partitioning, hardware accelerator implementation, data-flow and cache/memory management, memory bandwidth analysis, bus arbitration definition.Hands-on performance verification on Palladium emulator (Cadence) for both hardware and firmware design.Follow-up of the “back-end phase”, including floor-planning and timing closure.Hands-on gate level simulation debug with VCS tool (Synopsys)Hands-on validation on the real IC with exhaustive test suiteSilicon proven and first time right: successfully demonstrated at NAB2008.Leaded an IC validation team of 4 people for the following blocks: HDTV video decoder, ARMs CPU and Network Interface (USB, SATA, Ethernet) Voir moins

  • Project Manager & System Architect

    Jan 2004 - Jan 2009

  • Activity Manager of the Advanced Hardware group

    Jan 2002 - Jan 2003

  • IC Validation Leader

    Sept 1997 - Jan 2001

  • Group Leader of the Scan/Standards conversion group.

    Sept 1996 - Jan 1997
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  Technicolor Group

  Jan 2009 - Mar 2021

  Project management for Android STB development:- Technical interface with customers (specifications, support, reporting)- Schedule/cost management- Tracking of R&D development including Hardware and Software activities in the Android framework- Backlog management as SW product owner- Certification context: Google, Netflix, Amazon, Zwave- Industrialization follow-up, mass-production +100Ku/month Responsible for software development in the domain of picture enhancement for Mobile devices and AR/VR headsets.Team of 15+ engineers based in France, USA and ChinaFrequent customer facing (TCL, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Huawei, ACER, ASUS, ..)Successful deployment of "Color Enhance" feature on TCL Idol smartphone and LENOVO Yoga tablet (volume > 5 Mu) Architecture definition for integration of Technicolor technology in consumer products: color enhancement and object tracking technology.Scrum master of a team of 9 people that develops techno bricks to be provided to smartphone/Tablet/TV manufacturer. Algorithm development for 3D video rendering: tuning and validation on PC then porting on STB platform (Intel Sodaville & STi7105 chips). This activity takes place in a process of skill enrichment in the software development domain (see further EDUCATION).

  • R&D Project Manager - Android TV

    Oct 2017 - Mar 2021

  • R&D Manager - Technology Licensing

    Jan 2016 - Sept 2017

  • System Architect - Technology Transfer

    Jan 2012 - Jan 2015

  • Technical Advisor - Research & Innovation

    Jan 2009 - Mar 2012
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  Pixotope

  Mar 2021 - now

  Video Processing Specialist

  Working in the Virtual Studio production domain with the objective to improve picture quality in Pixotope software: a solution for rapidly creating virtual studios, augmented reality, and on-air graphics. My responsibilities are focused on the video part, including the composition with graphics:- improve picture quality for the existing features: color accuracy, chroma keying- explore state of the art computer vision technologies for introduction of new Mixed Reality features- develop innovative algorithm, porting in C++, HLSL, python, UE blueprints- integrate AI based library from Third Parties for natural matting and body pose estimationSoftware development environment: Git/Bitbucket/CircleCIProject environment: Agile/JIRA/Confluence Voir moins