Sunday, August 22, 2010

Interview with Oshkosh Native Thurman John ("T.J.") Rodgers, CEO and President of Cypress Semiconductor


Link to August 21 San Jose Mercury News interview.

Excerpt: A longtime Silicon Valley visionary known for his outspokenness, Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers has been on a mission to transform the San Jose chipmaker, in part by fostering a take-chances entrepreneurial spirit at its corporate core.

Founded by Rodgers in 1982, Cypress once primarily was a maker of memory chips that store information. But, more recently, it also has become a leading supplier of programmable system-on-chip semiconductors, which its customers can flexibly configure to run their specific applications on everything from laptops to toys.

Those chips -- PSoCs for short -- were developed through a Rodgers innovation that encourages separate startups within his company to explore new markets. Another such startup was the solar-panel maker SunPower, which Cypress spun off two years ago
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