Helen Zhao’s Transition from Startup ScaleFlux to Rivos Silicon Validation

Helen Zhao has been with Rivos for over two years, working across some of the most critical stages of the company’s chip development. From top-level SoC design verification to emulation and silicon validation, the projects she works on are deeply technical and cross-functional. There are many steps needed to bring up a chip such as booting the system, integrating key components (e.g. fabric, memory controllers, GPGPU), and enabling the firmware and software teams to run real workloads.

Helen’s work often involves coordinating with design, verification, firmware, and software teams to ensure each layer of the system is functioning as expected. “It’s a huge chip,” she says, “so you have to take it step by step.” 

Helen’s career path has always centered around tackling hard technical problems. She received her master’s in engineering from the National University of Singapore in 1999. Prior to Rivos, she was a founding member at ScaleFlux, a startup in the storage space, where she spent seven years scaling a team from the ground up and eventually leading verification, validation, and emulation. 

Earlier in her career, Helen held engineering roles at Juniper Networks, Sun Microsystems, and Huawei US R&D, where she focused on ASIC verification and brought up critical subsystems like memory controller, fabric, and CPU tile subsystems. Transitioning to the startup space felt natural for Helen. “Even at larger companies, I gravitated toward smaller teams and a fast-paced working environment,” she said.

Helen was drawn to Rivos as she had been looking for something at the intersection of AI and RISC-V, and became interested in the company’s project. As seen by her past work, she thrives in a high responsibility, high impact environment. Since joining in March 2023, Helen has contributed to SoC top DV, supported emulation efforts, and helped enable software teams to operate at the system level. Currently, she works on silicon bring up and validation. She appreciates the flexibility and trust she’s found at Rivos.

Outside of work, Helen enjoys watching movies or TV series and tending to her flower garden.