Levy Gerzberg (born 1945) is an Israeli-American businessman and inventor, known for co-founding

Zoran Corporation Zoran Corporation was a multinational digital technology company, founded in 1981 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, that was predominantly focused on designing and selling SoC (System on a Chip) integrated circuits for consumer electronic ...

. Zoran pioneered directly and via acquisitions the design and marketing of

system on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...

(SoC) technology and devices which operate many consumer electronic products. These include Digital Cameras,

DVD Players A DVD player is a device that plays DVDs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to wa ...

, DVRs,

HDTV High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...

sets,

set-top boxes A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...

, Home Theaters,

Printers Printer may refer to: Technology * Printer (publishing), a person or a company * Printer (computing), a hardware device * Optical printer for motion picture films People * Nariman Printer ( fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist * Jame ...

, Digital Tuners, and more.

Early life

Born in Israel, he attended the Technion, Israel's Institute of Technology, earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in medical electronics. He moved to the United States in 1972 and earned a Ph.D in electrical engineering from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. He was a doctoral student of integrated circuitry pioneer

James D. Meindl James Donald Meindl (April 20, 1933 – June 7, 2020) was director of the Joseph M. Pettit Microelectronics Research Center and the Marcus Nanotechnology Research Center and Pettit Chair Professor of Microelectronics at the Georgia Institute ...

Career

He began his career as an associate director of Stanford’s Electronics Laboratory. In 1981, he co-founded

in Silicon Valley. Zoran is the Hebrew word for silicon. The founders conceived of integrating the

digital signal processing Digital signal processing (DSP) is the use of digital processing, such as by computers or more specialized digital signal processors, to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations. The digital signals processed in this manner are ...

(DSP) components of electronic system on a single silicon chip that would later be known as (SoC). The company initially created silicon chips and software for medical, industrial and military markets. Recognizing the new digital age, Gerzberg switched to designing chips and software for consumer electronics. The company’s first consumer product was a credit-card sized digital camera SoC that was used in the world’s first fully digital camera, Fujifilm’s FUJIX DS-1P. The technology was later used by many manufacturers, including

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

, Konica, Minolta, Nikon, Pentax,

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

Olympus Olympus or Olympos ( grc, Ὄλυμπος, link=no) may refer to: Mountains In antiquity Greece * Mount Olympus in Thessaly, northern Greece, the home of the twelve gods of Olympus in Greek mythology * Mount Olympus (Lesvos), located in Les ...

, and others. Under Gerzberg’s leadership, the company created digital camera technology, which features became mainstream, such as displaying high-resolution photos from a digital camera on an HDTV via an

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a display controller, ...

connection, direct printing from a camera to a printer without a personal computer, image and video stabilization, lens distortion correction, and integrating advanced camera technology on mobile devices. Gerzberg led company efforts to create SoCs including those that standardized

Dolby Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (often shortened to Dolby Labs and known simply as Dolby) is an American company specializing in audio noise reduction, audio encoding/compression, spatial audio, and HDR imaging. Dolby licenses its technologies to ...

digital audio in DVD players as well as movie and home theater systems, and more. The company was involved with digital video, audio, television, cameras, and printing as well as set-top boxes. Under Gerzberg's leadership, Zoran created the successful processor for

DVD player A DVD player is a device that plays DVDs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to wa ...

s and other gadgets with about 35% market share. Its Camera on a Chip (COACH) line of digital camera processors was also popular. Zoran's headquarters were in Silicon Valley, CA and had development and marketing centers in the U.S., China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. Gerzberg was President and CEO of Zoran from 1981 to 1985. He served as Executive Vice President and CTO from 1985 to 1987. Gerzberg was President and CEO From 1988 until 2011. The company went public in 1995, the stock traded on the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

(ZRAN). Semiconductor maker CSR on Nasdaq and on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) purchased Zoran in 2011. Gerzberg holds 10 U.S. Patents, and Zoran’s inventions have accounted for more than 1,000 patents. He authored or co-authored more than 50 technical papers about the design of integrated circuits, device physics and fabrication, digital signal processing and related applications. Gerzberg founded the Liora and Levy Gerzberg Family Foundation which contributes to a variety of healthcare and educational causes. He is a trustee of the

Consumer Technology Association The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) is a standard and trade organization representing 1,376 consumer technology companies in the United States. CTA works to influence public policy, holds events such as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES ...

Foundation and is on the Board of the American Friends of the Rambam Medical Center. Gerzberg served two-terms on the CEA Board of Industry Leaders. An avid open-water swimmer, Gerzberg founded the “Swim From the Heart” swim meet in Haifa, Israel that raises money to support research to treat Sudden Cardiac Death in Children. He also has swum from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco dozens of times, frequently raising money for children’s charities.

Awards

In 2003, Gerzberg was named Northern California’s “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year” in the semiconductor category. In 2004, he received the California Israel Chamber of Commerce International Partnership Award. In 2007 he was elected to a seat on the Board of Industry Leaders of the Consumer Electronics Association. In 2014, he was inducted to the

Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame The Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame, founded by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), honors leaders whose creativity, persistence, determination and personal charisma helped to shape the industry and made the consumer electronics marketpla ...

References

Israeli chief executives Stanford University alumni Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni 1945 births Living people {{US-business-bio-1940s-stub