Cypress Semiconductor was an American semiconductor design and
manufacturing
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...
company. It offered
NOR flash memories, F-RAM and SRAM Traveo microcontrollers,
PSoC programmable system-on-chip solutions, analog and
PMIC Power Management ICs, CapSense
capacitive touch-sensing controllers,
Wireless BLE Bluetooth Low-Energy and
USB connectivity solutions.
Its headquarters were in
San Jose, California
San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...
, with operations in the United States, Ireland, India and the Philippines.
In April 2016, Cypress Semiconductors announced the acquisition of
Broadcom
Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...
’s Wireless Internet of Things Business. The deal was closed in July 2016.
In June 2019, Infineon Technologies announced it would acquire Cypress for $9.4 billion. The deal closed in April 2020, making Infineon one of the world's top 10 semiconductor manufacturers.
Some of its main competitors included
Microchip Technology
Microchip Technology Inc. is a publicly-listed American corporation that manufactures microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP integrated circuits. Its products include microcontrollers ( PIC, dsPIC, AVR and SAM), Serial EEPROM ...
,
NXP Semiconductors
NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXP) is a Dutch semiconductor designer and manufacturer with headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The company employs approximately 31,000 people in more than 30 countries. NXP reported revenue of $11.06 billion in 2 ...
,
Renesas Electronics
is a Japanese semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, initially incorporated in 2002 as Renesas Technology, the consolidated entity of the semiconductor units of Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric, Mitsubishi excluding their dynam ...
and
Micron Technology
Micron Technology, Inc. is an American producer of computer memory and computer data storage including dynamic random-access memory, flash memory, and USB flash drives. It is headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Its consumer products, including ...
.
History
Founding and early years
It was founded by
T. J. Rodgers
Thurman John "T. J." Rodgers (born March 15, 1948) is an American billionaire scientist and entrepreneur. He is the founder of Cypress Semiconductor and holds patents ranging from semiconductors to energy to winemaking. Rodgers is known for his p ...
and others (Fritz Beyerlein, Fred Jenne, Steven H. Kaplan, R. Michael Starnes and Lowell Turriff) from
Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufact ...
. 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
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFE ...
SRAMs,
EEPROM
EEPROM (also called E2PROM) stands for electrically erasable programmable read-only memory and is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers, usually integrated in microcontrollers such as smart cards and remote keyless systems, or as a ...
s,
PAL devices, and
TTL devices. Two years after going public the company switched from 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 ...
to the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...
. In October 2009, the company announced it would switch its listing to the NASDAQ on November 12, 2009.
The AgigA Tech, Inc. subsidiary sells non-volatile random-access memory (
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* Ra ...
). 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 also co-founded Anchor Chips. The division was sold to the
Unigen Corporation
Estrone (E1), sold under the brand names Estragyn, Kestrin, and Theelin among many others, is an estrogen medication and naturally occurring steroid hormone which has been used in menopausal hormone therapy and for other indications. It has bee ...
in May 2021.
In November 2011, Cypress also backed a packaging firm called Deca Technologies, Inc.
2015
In December 2014, Cypress Semiconductor merged with
Spansion
Spansion Inc. was an American-based company that designed, developed, and manufactured flash memory, microcontrollers, mixed-signal and analog products, and system-on-chip (SoC) solutions.Reuters.Spansion Inc." July 26, 2010.By Mark LaPedus, EE T ...
in an all-stock deal worth $1.59 billion. The merger represented the combination of two companies that were No. 1 in their respective memory markets and have successfully diversified into embedded processing.
In March 2015, Cypress and Spansion completed of the transactions of the merger in an all-stock, tax-free transaction valued at approximately $5 billion. Cypress shareholders approved the issuance of 2.457 shares of Cypress stock to Spansion shareholders for each Spansion share they own. The merger is expected to achieve more than $135 million in cost synergies on an annualized basis within three years and to be accretive to non-GAAP earnings within the first full year after the transaction closes. At the time of its merger with Spansion in 2015, Cypress Semiconductor had more than 7,000 US and foreign patents. Cypress Semiconductor is a component of the Ocean Tomo 300 Patent Index.
[300® Patent Index](_blank)
Ocean Tomo. Retrieved on 2013-11-20.
Cypress attempted to acquire
Integrated Silicon Solution Inc.
Integration may refer to:
Biology
*Multisensory integration
*Path integration
* Pre-integration complex, viral genetic material used to insert a viral genome into a host genome
*DNA integration, by means of site-specific recombinase technology, ...
in 2015 but was thwarted by a competing bid by Chinese buyer consortium Uphill Investment Co., which included
GigaDevice
GigaDevice Semiconductor () is a Chinese NOR flash memory designer. It also produces microcontrollers, some of them are based on the ARM architecture (GD32 series), and other on the RISC-V architecture (GD32V series). GD32 chips were introduced i ...
, a major competitor in the NOR flash market. This buyer consortium offered a higher bid than Cypress and successfully acquired ISSI for $731 million.
Also in 2015, Cypress tried to acquire
Atmel
Atmel Corporation was a creator and manufacturer of semiconductors before being subsumed by Microchip Technology in 2016. Atmel was founded in 1984. The company focused on embedded systems built around microcontrollers. Its products included micr ...
, but was outbid by
Dialog Semiconductor
Dialog Semiconductor PLC is an American founded UK-Domiciled manufacturer of semiconductor-based system solutions. The company is headquartered in the United Kingdom in Reading, with a global sales, R&D and marketing organization. Dialog create ...
(in the end,
Microchip Technology
Microchip Technology Inc. is a publicly-listed American corporation that manufactures microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP integrated circuits. Its products include microcontrollers ( PIC, dsPIC, AVR and SAM), Serial EEPROM ...
made the deal).
2016
In April 2016, Cypress announced the acquisition of Broadcom’s Wireless Internet of Things (IoT) business and related assets in an all-cash transaction valued at $550 million. Under the terms of the deal, Cypress will acquire Broadcom's Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee IoT product lines and intellectual property, along with its
WICED brand and developer ecosystem.
In April 2016, it was announced that Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc. will invest $60 million in Deca and will license Deca’s M-Series
fan-out wafer-level packaging
Fan-out wafer-level packaging (also known as wafer-level fan-out packaging, fan-out WLP, FOWL packaging, FO-WLP, FOWLP, etc.) is an integrated circuit packaging technology, and an enhancement of standard wafer-level packaging (WLP) solutions.
In c ...
(FOWLP) technologies and processes. As part of the agreement,
ASE Group
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc. (), also known as ASE Group (), is a provider of independent semiconductor assembling and test manufacturing services, with its headquarters in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Overview
The company was founded in 1984 ...
and Deca will jointly develop the M-Series fan-out manufacturing process and will expand production of chip-scale packages using this technology.
Cypress named
Hassane El-Khoury
onsemi (stylized in lowercase; legally ON Semiconductor Corporation; formerly ON Semiconductor until August 5, 2021) is an American semiconductor supplier company, based in Phoenix, Arizona and ranked #483 on the 2022 ''Fortune'' 500 based on it ...
its president and chief executive officer, and announced he will join the board of directors on Aug. 11, 2016.
2017 board dispute
In April 2017
Delaware Chancery Court
The Delaware Court of Chancery is a court of equity in the American state of Delaware. It is one of Delaware's three constitutional courts, along with the Supreme Court and Superior Court. Since 2018, the court consists of seven judges. The chie ...
decided Cypress Semiconductor Corp. had to give former CEO Rodgers insight into internal documents related to possible violations of Cypress's Code of Business Conduct and Ethics by executive chairman
Ray Bingham.
Bingham, who is a founding member of
venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
firm Canyon Bridge Capital Partners Inc, a
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
state-backed private equity fund, was criticized for the
conflict of interest
A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations i ...
leading Cypress and Canyon Bridge as both companies possibly focus on the same acquisition targets.
Rodgers ran a
proxy contest
A proxy fight, proxy contest or proxy battle (sometimes even called a proxy war) is an unfriendly contest for the control over an organization. The event usually occurs when a corporation's stockholders develop opposition to some aspect of the corp ...
against the
board
Board or Boards may refer to:
Flat surface
* Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat
** Plank (wood)
** Cutting board
** Sounding board, of a musical instrument
* Cardboard (paper product)
* Paperboard
* Fiberboard
** Hardboard, a ty ...
, aiming for veteran tech industry board directors Daniel McCranie and Camillo Martino to replace Ray Bingham and Cypress director
Éric Benhamou
Éric Benhamou (born in 1955 in Tlemcen, Algeria) was the former CEO of 3Com and Palm.
Biography
Born into a Sephardic Jewish family originating from Toledo, Spain, Benhamou left Algeria in 1960 with his parents during Algeria's independence w ...
.
On June 12, 2017 it was made public that Ray Bingham stepped down from the board. Prior to Bingham’s resignation, shareholder-advisory firms
ISS
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (J ...
,
Glass Lewis
Glass, Lewis & Co. (Glass Lewis) is a major American proxy advisory services company. As of spring 2019, Glass Lewis controlled 28% of the proxy advisory market for mutual funds; this makes it the second-largest company in the market behind Insti ...
and
Egan-Jones
Egan-Jones Ratings Company is a nationally recognized statistical rating organization (NRSRO) that was founded in 1995 to provide "timely, accurate credit ratings." Egan-Jones rates the credit worthiness of issuers looking to raise capital in pri ...
had recommended McCranie and Martino, Rodgers's nominees, citing "additional - and sharper - questions not only regarding the board's handling of this situation but also regarding the potential for conflicts of interest inherent in Bingham's dual roles."
On June 20, 2017, both of Rodgers's nominees won victories by substantial margins.
2019-2020 merger
In 2019 under CEO Hassane El-Khouri the company agreed to the offer of
Infineon Technologies
Infineon Technologies AG is a German semiconductor manufacturer founded in 1999, when the semiconductor operations of the former parent company Siemens AG were spun off. Infineon has about 50,280 employees and is one of the ten largest semicond ...
valued about $9 billions (that represents the all-cash buyout price of $23.85 per share). This purchase price premium of 55% was the 4th highest premium paid for a public semiconductor company with greater than $1 Billion in value since 2014. The price also represented 18.2 times next twelve month average analyst EBITDA estimates, which was the 4th highest EBITDA multiple paid for a public semiconductor company with a value greater than $1 Billion since 2014. The acquisition was announced complete on April 17, 2020, ending the independent history of Cypress Semiconductors.
Locations
Cypress was headquartered in San Jose, CA and had manufacturing plants in
Austin, TX
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...
and
Bloomington, MN
Bloomington is a suburban city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, on the north bank of the Minnesota River, above its confluence with the Mississippi River, south of downtown Minneapolis. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 89,987, ...
, assembly and test operations in the Philippines and Bangkok,
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
. Cypress had design facilities in the United States (including San Jose, CA; Lynnwood, WA; Colorado Springs, CO; Lexington, KY; San Diego, CA; and Beaverton, OR), Japan (Tokyo),
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
(Langen and Munich), India (Bangalore), China (Shanghai), Ukraine (Lviv), Ireland (Dublin and Cork), Malaysia (Penang) and other locations. Cypress had previously divested a large portion of its San Jose campus to
SVTC,
SunPower
SunPower is an American provider of photovoltaic solar energy generation systems and battery energy storage products, primarily for residential customers. The company, headquartered in San Jose, California, was founded in 1985 by Richard Sw ...
and
Second Harvest of Silicon Valley
Second Harvest of Silicon Valley (abbreviated SHSV) is a food bank based in San Jose, California, that serves Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, including Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Peninsula. With $ in revenue in 2019, it is the larg ...
.
List of acquisitions
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. In addition, Cypress has been an active acquirer of smaller technology companies. In addition, Cypress has incorporated some of its technology into subsidiaries, to speed up development of such products as the
PSoC
PSoC (programmable system on a chip) is a family of microcontroller integrated circuits by Cypress Semiconductor. These chips include a CPU core and mixed-signal arrays of configurable integrated analog and digital peripherals.
History ...
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 system
An embedded system is a computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is ''embedded'' as ...
s. Since the early 1990s, acquisitions have included:
* Timing Technology
** IC Design
** IC Works
[Bloomberg. ]
Company Overview of IC Works, Inc.
” Retrieved August 25, 2016.
** International Microcircuits Inc.
* USB Technology
** Anchor Chips
** In-System Design
** ScanLogic
*
SoC Technology
** Broadcom (WICED)
** Cypress Microsystems (PSoC)
*
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* Ra ...
Technology
** Galvantech, Inc.
** Cascade Semiconductor Corporation
**
Simtek Corporation
Simtek Corporation, headquartered in Colorado Springs, CO, was an early leader in the development of SONOS memory technology which it used in its nvSRAM product line which featured a SONOS Flash memory coupled with an SRAM shadow memory to ac ...
**
Ramtron
Cypress Semiconductor was an American semiconductor design and manufacturing company. It offered Flash memory, NOR flash memories, F-RAM and SRAM Traveo microcontrollers, PSoC, PSoC programmable system-on-chip solutions, analog and Power manage ...
*
Radio Frequency
Radio frequency (RF) is the oscillation rate of an alternating electric current or voltage or of a magnetic, electric or electromagnetic field or mechanical system in the frequency range from around to around . This is roughly between the upp ...
Technology
** Alation
** RadioCom
*
Solar Cell
A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon. Technology
**
SunPower
SunPower is an American provider of photovoltaic solar energy generation systems and battery energy storage products, primarily for residential customers. The company, headquartered in San Jose, California, was founded in 1985 by Richard Sw ...
(distributed to CY shareholders in 2008 as SPWRB stock)
** PowerLight
*
Image Sensor
An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to make an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves (as they pass through or reflect off objects) into signals, small bursts of curr ...
s
** Silicon Light Machines
** FillFactory (sold to ON Semiconductor)
** SMaL Camera Technologies (Sold to Sensata Technologies in 2007)
* Datacom/Telecom
** Arcus
** Silicon Packets
** Lara Networks
** HiBand Semiconductors
See also
*
SunPower
SunPower is an American provider of photovoltaic solar energy generation systems and battery energy storage products, primarily for residential customers. The company, headquartered in San Jose, California, was founded in 1985 by Richard Sw ...
*
List of semiconductor fabrication plants
This is a list of semiconductor fabrication plants. A semiconductor fabrication plant is where integrated circuits (ICs), also known as microchips, are manufactured. They are either operated by Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) who design an ...
*
List of S&P 400 companies
This is a list of companies having stocks that are included in the S&P MidCap 400 (S&P 400) stock market index. The index, maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices, comprises the common stocks of 400 mid-cap, mostly American, companies. Although called ...
*
Kr00k
Kr00k (also written as KrØØk) is a security vulnerability that allows some WPA2 encrypted WiFi traffic to be decrypted. The vulnerability was originally discovered by security company ESET in 2019 and assigned on August 17, 2019. ESET estimat ...
, vulnerability in some Cypress WiFi chips.
References
External links
*
{{authority control
Semiconductor companies of the United States
Electronic design automation companies
Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Manufacturing companies based in San Jose, California
American companies established in 1982
Electronics companies established in 1982
1982 establishments in California
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
2020 mergers and acquisitions
1980s initial public offerings
American subsidiaries of foreign companies