Hellenica World

Cypress Semiconductor

Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: CY) is a Silicon Valley-based semiconductor design and manufacturing company founded by T. J. Rodgers and others from Advanced Micro Devices. It was formed in 1982 with backing by Sevin Rosen and went public in 1986. The company initially focused on the design and development of high speed CMOS SRAMs, EEPROMs, PAL devices, and TTL logic devices. Two years after going public the company switched from the NASDAQ to the New York Stock Exchange. In October 2009, the company announced it would switch its listing to the NASDAQ on November 12, 2009.[1] Its headquarters are in San Jose, California, and it has divisions in the United States, Ireland, India and the Philippines as well as a fabrication plant in Minnesota.

Some of its main competitors include Microchip Technology, Integrated Device Technology, Samsung Electronics, and Xilinx.

Acquisition strategy

Since its founding, Cypress has acted as an incubator for wholly owned subsidiaries which are given a degree of autonomy and has acquired other small technology companies. Since the mid-2000s these acquisitions have included:

Timing Technology:
IC Design
IC Works
International Microcircuits Inc.
USB Technology:
Anchor Chips
In-System Design
ScanLogic
SRAM Technology:
Galvantech, Inc.
Cascade Semiconductor Corporation
Simtek
Radio Frequency Technology:
Alation
RadioCom
Solar Cell Technology (distributed to CY shareholders in 2008 as SPWRB stock)
SunPower
PowerLight
Image Sensors
Silicon Light Machines
FillFactory
SMaL Camera Technologies(Sold to Sensata Technologies in 2007)
Datacom/Telecom
Arcus
Silicon Packets
Lara Networks
HiBand Semiconductors

In addition, Cypress has incorporated some of its technology into subsidiaries, in order to speed up development of such products as the PSoC Programmable System-on-Chip (SoC) that integrates analog and digital components with a microcontroller on a single chip to form a complete solution for embedded systems.

Major product offerings

Cypress TrueTouch Multi-touch Sensing Systems
PSoC a software configured, mixed-signal array with a built-in MCU core
General Purpose Programmable Clock generators
Control Communications
Image sensors
Memory
Optical Sensors
Physical Layer Devices
Programmable Logic Devices
Universal Serial Bus
West Bridge ultra high-speed peripheral controllers
Wireless
CyFi 2.4 GHz RF Solution

Patents

Cypress Semiconductors currently has over 1650 patents, with 1100 more pending[2]

Locations

Cypress is headquartered in San Jose, CA and has manufacturing plants and design facilities in the United States (including San Jose CA, Lynnwood WA, Colorado Springs CO, Bloomington MN, Lexington KY, San Diego CA, Beaverton OR), the Philippines (Manila), India (Bangalore, Chennai), China (Shanghai), and Ireland (Cork). Former sites which have been closed down include Hyderabad (India), UK (London), as well as several in the United States (Austin TX, Round Rock TX, Nashua NH, Starkville MS, Boise ID, Boston MA, and Moscow ID). Cypress has divested a large portion of its San Jose campus to SVTC, SunPower, and Second Harvest Food Bank.

Subsidiaries

Cypress Envirosystems provides products and solutions that save energy and improve productivity for older plants and buildings. The subsidiary is based in San Jose, California. The formation of Cypress Envirosystems was announced in January 2009.[3]

AgigaTech, Inc. sells non-volatile random-access memory (RAM) and is based in San Diego, California. It was acquired during the Simtek purchase in August 2008, and marks the second time that Cypress acquired a start-up venture from founder, Ron Sartore (who co-founded Anchor Chips as well.)