Peregrine Semiconductor, formed in 1990 and acquired by Murata in 2014, today announced a new name and logo — pSemi™ — and an expanded charter for semiconductor integration. In addition to its historic focus on RF switches and related components for mobile and infrastructure, pSemi’s product portfolio will encompass power management, connected sensors and optical transceivers.
pSemi will remain a Murata company, with no changes to its present management team: Stefan Wolff, CEO, and Jim Cable, CTO and board chair.
The pSemi name will be used with all new products. Existing Peregrine Semiconductor products will remain branded under the Peregrine Semiconductor name and logo and supported by the same sales teams, distributors and applications engineers.
Norio Nakajima, the senior executive vice president for Murata’s module business, said, “We’ve challenged the pSemi team to broaden their scope, increase their intellectual property portfolio and grow on a global scale to support more semiconductor innovations. As a Murata company, pSemi will leverage the breadth of Murata’s manufacturing and technology leadership, while maintaining a level of autonomy that accelerates its path to semiconductor integration. pSemi will serve as the hub for Murata’s semiconductor activities, and we are investing in its aggressive growth strategy to fuel our move into more advanced and intelligent modules.”
To support the expanded charter, the company is adding engineers and professionals globally.
Announcing the new name, the company noted two significant milestones: 30 years developing RF CMOS and shipping 4 billion chips during its history. In January 1988, Peregrine Semiconductor’s founders published a research paper that served as the foundation for its UltraCMOS® technology platform. The paper was the first of many semiconductor innovations the company has achieved. The 4 billion threshold was crossed with a shipment to Samsung.
CEO Stefan Wolff said, “As pSemi celebrates these significant milestones, we reflect on the company’s history. Over a span of three decades, many industry firsts were achieved, such as CMOS switches, SOI power amplifiers and millimeter wave beamforming. Our patent portfolio continues to grow and is now ranked as one of the technology world’s most valuable patent portfolios, and finally, we became a Murata company. The launch of pSemi is the next chapter in this company’s history. I am grateful to Murata for selecting us for this important growth strategy, and I am honored to lead this incredible team forward.”