Commercializing Silicon on Sapphire

Commercializing Silicon on Sapphire

Friday, Oct. 7, 2011

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Jacobs Hall, Lobby

Qualcomm Conference Suite

Ron Reedy, Ph.D., UCSD ’83

Co-Founder and CTO, Peregrine Semiconductor

Silicon on Sapphire, SOS, was invented in 1963 by Hal Manasevit, blessed with incredible technical merit and cursed with seemingly insurmountable manufacturing issues. For the next 3 decades, SOS morphed from a child prodigy to an aged has-been on death’s doorstep. Only a small, dedicated group of Government researchers kept it alive long enough to see its killer application arrive: commercial, high-volume mobile wireless communications.

In 1990 Peregrine Semiconductor was founded on the premise that cellular phones would require integrated RF solutions just as personal computers required integrated digital solutions. Driven by integration and cost, a CMOS solution would dominate this opportunity and a CMOS technology on an RF (insulating) substrate would be the ideal solution.

Twenty years later, Peregrine is an overnight success and about to ship our billionth CMOS on sapphire RFIC. In this presentation, the history of technical, product, business and financial hurdles will be discussed. If you don’t want to be an entrepreneur when we are done, I will have failed.

This event is being presented by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

BIOGRAPHY:  Ronald E. Reedy, Ph.D., a Peregrine co-founder, serves as Chief Technical Officer. Dr. Reedy, who has more than 30 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, co-founded Peregrine in 1990. Previously, he was the branch head of the microelectronics division at Navy Research and Development Center (NRaD). He is responsible for expanding capabilities and usage of Peregrine’s UltraCMOS™ technology.

            Dr. Reedy is credited as one of the inventors of Peregrine's patented UltraCMOS technology. He has over thirty five years of experience in silicon on insulator and silicon on sapphire research, manufacturing and product development. He holds a BSEE degree from the U.S. Naval Academy, an MSEE from US Naval Postgraduate School. In 1983 he received a Ph.D. in Applied Physics/EE from University of California at San Diego based on pioneering work in monolithic integration of optical and electronic components. Dr. Reedy is co-recipient of 2011 IEEE Daniel E. Noble Award for Emerging Technologies (the other co-recipient, Dr. Mark Burgener is also a UCSD alum). Dr. Reedy has published dozens of technical articles and is an author on over thirty patents, all related to microelectronics or electro-optics. He has been a presenter or invited speaker at dozens of technical and financial conferences.

Hosted by Professor Paul Yu