T. J. Rodgers

Thurman John "T. J." Rodgers (born March 15, 1948) is an American 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 public relations acumen, brash personality, and strong advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism. He stepped down as Cypress CEO in April 2016 and Director in August 2016 after serving for 34 years.
Early life.
Rodgers was born on March 15, 1948 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He goes back to nearby Green Bay, Wisconsin several times a year to attend Green Bay Packers football games. His father was a car salesman and worked for General Motors and his mother was a school teacher, with a master's degree in radio electronics. He was a Sloan scholar at Dartmouth College and played on the Dartmouth Big Green football team. In 1970 he received his bachelor's degree, graduating as "salutatorian" with majors in chemistry and physics. He received his master's degree (1973) and Ph.D. (1975) in electrical engineering from Stanford University. While pursuing his Ph.D. degree, Rodgers invented the VMOS process technology, which he later licensed to American Microsystems, Inc. He founded Cypress Semiconductor in 1982. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City.
Career.
After finishing a doctorate at Stanford, he turned down a job offer from Intel, saying that CEO Andrew S. Grove was unlikely to give him the freedom to pursue his own projects. Instead Rodgers accepted a job at American Microsystems, Inc. (AMI), where he continued working on a special chip technology he invented at Stanford, but this project was a failure.
Cypress Semiconductor.
Rodgers founded Cypress Semiconductor in 1982 and served as founding CEO. Cypress is a semiconductor design and manufacturing company, producing PSoCs, microcontroller, IoT, wireless and USB, PMICs, memory and sensor chips. As CEO, Rodgers was responsible for more than 30 acquisitions, including SunPower and the IoT portfolio of Broadcom Corporation. Cypress also benefited from its business with Apple Inc., as its PSoC was behind the iPod click wheel. He stepped down as CEO in April 2016. In 2015, Cypress had more than 6,000 employees and revenues of US$1.6 billion. The company had about 7,000 issued patents and about 1,200 additional patent applications on record.
Proxy fight.
In 2017 Rodgers conducted a successful proxy fight against Cypress. He raised concerns pertaining to director compensation, state-sponsored foreign competition as well as inherent conflicts of interest. After filing a lawsuit against the company in April 2017, Rodgers sought to remove executive chairman Ray Bingham and Eric Benhamou from the Cypress board and nominated Dan McCranie and Camillo Martino as directors. Rodgers argued that Bingham's role as a co-founder of Canyon Bridge, a private equity fund supported by the Government of China, constituted a clear conflict- of interest as acquisition targets for both companies overlapped. Bingham was forced to resign from the Cypress board in early June 2017 and both of Rodgers' nominees won the subsequent 2017 shareholder election against Benhamou.
SunPower.
Rodgers early recognized the value of high efficiency solar cells produced by SunPower. As SunPower faced financial problems in 2001, Rodgers tried to convince the Cypress board to buy the solar cell producer. Rodgers and SunPower CEO Richard Swanson had met in the 70s at Stanford University. But as the Cypress board of directors was not interested in saving the struggling company Rodgers wrote a check himself for $750,000. About a year later Rodgers had convinced the board to invest $9 million in SunPower and a few months later Cypress bought a majority stake in SunPower. In 2005 SunPower went public and reached a market capitalization of $10.4 billion in 2007. From May 2002 to May 2011, Rodgers served as chairman of SunPower.
Enphase Energy.
In January 2017, Rodgers invested US$5 million in Enphase Energy, a renewable energy firm specialized in energy management and the production of solar micro-inverters, which transform solar energy to alternating current for the electrical grid. In addition to his investment, Rodgers joined Enphase's board of directors.
Board memberships.
Rodgers also served as director of the Semiconductor Industry Association.
Trustee of Dartmouth College.
After successfully launching a petition drive to get his name on the ballot, Rodgers won the alumni trustee election of Dartmouth College in 2004, becoming the first successful petition candidate since 1980. He won with a comfortable margin. As trustee, Rodgers’ major concerns were removing the College's speech code, increasing the budget for teacher salaries and strengthening Dartmouth's focus on undergraduate education. Following the campaign of Rodgers, three additional independent trustees were elected in 2005 and 2007. Rodgers was reelected as trustee in 2009.
Clos de la Tech.
Rodgers began winemaking in 1996 on a one-acre vineyard surrounding his house in Woodside. Later he bought two additional vineyards and, along with his wife Valeta, Rodgers established the winery Clos de la Tech in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Silicon Valley. Clos de la Tech uses old French winemaking techniques of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti to make five Pinot Noir wines. This includes stomping the grapes with feet and siphoning the wine by hand. Also, no mechanized pumps are used. Clos de la Tech combines these old techniques with high tech monitoring and measures to optimize the conditions for the crops and to handle grapes and wine as gently as possible. Clos de la Tech's Pinot Noirs have been rated up to 96 points by Wine Enthusiast Magazine. As winemaker, Rodgers invented a patented wine press and computer monitored fermenters. He also designed and built the first wireless wine fermentation network, comprising 152 fermenters, and donated the system worth US$3.5 million to the UC Davis winery.
Rodgers on Diversity.
In 1996, Rodgers made headlines when Sister Doris Gormley, the Director of Corporate Social Responsibility for The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, sent him a form letter encouraging him to hire women and minorities on the Cypress board. He replied with a long letter defending his hiring practices and philosophy. In 1999, he wrote an editorial in the "San Jose Mercury News" denouncing Jesse Jackson's attack on Cypress Semiconductor on what Jackson claimed was discriminatory hiring practices.
Personal life.
Rodgers is an avid jogger and wine enthusiast. He is a supporter of several charities, including Second Harvest Food Bank, and served as a trustee on the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees from 2004 to 2012. He is the husband of Valeta Massey.
Awards and recognition.
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Patents.
1975
"US3878552" – Bipolar Integrated Circuit and Method
"US3924265" – Low capacitance V groove MOS NOR gate and method of manufacture
1976
"US3975221" – Low capacitance V groove MOS NOR gate and method of manufacture
1980
"US4222063" – VMOS Floating gate memory with breakdown voltage loweringregion
"US4222062" – VMOS Floating gate memory device
1981
"CA1115426" – U-groove mos device
1988
"US5835401" – DRAM with hidden refresh
"US4764248" – Rapid thermal nitridized oxide locos process
1999
"US5977638" – Edge metal for interconnect layers
2000
"US6131140" – Integrated cache memory with system control logic and adaptation of RAM bus to a cache pinout
2001
"US6185126" – Self-initializing RAM-based programmable device
2004
"US6835616" – Method of forming a floating metal structure in an integratedcircuit
"US6730545" – Method of performing back-end manufacturing of an integrated circuit device
"US2004076712" – Fermentation tank wine press 
2005
"US6903002" – Low-k dielectric layer with air gaps
"US6847218" – Probe card with an adapter layer for testing integrated circuits
2006
"US7045387" – Method of performing back-end manufacturing of an integrated circuit
2007
"US7227804" – Current source architecture for memory device standby current reduction
2008
"US2008315847" - Programmable floating gate reference
"US2008102160" - Wine-making press
2009
"US7507944" – Non-planar packaging of image sensor
2017
"US9624094" – Hydrogen barriers in a copper interconnect process