Peregrine Semiconductor Corp of San Diego, CA, USA – a fabless provider of radio-frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) – has announced its corporate name change to pSemi Corp, a Murata company focused on semiconductor integration.
Peregrine was acquired in December 2014 by Japan’s Murata Manufacturing Co Ltd, which designs and manufactures ceramic-based passive electronic components & solutions, communication modules and power supply modules. In March 2017, Peregrine acquired Arctic Sand Technologies of Burlington, MA, USA (a designer and manufacturer of low-power semiconductors for DC-DC power conversion) to accelerate Murata’s aim to provide the smallest, most efficient power solutions.
The name change will be rolled out across new products. Legacy products will remain branded under the Peregrine Semiconductor name and logo and will be supported by the same sales teams, distributors and applications engineers.
The name change coincides with two major milestones: the company’s 30-year anniversary and the shipment of its 4 billionth chip. pSemi will serve as Murata’s semiconductor arm and is tasked with growing rapidly to support its expanding product portfolio and the hiring of engineers and professionals globally.
pSemi will have a broader scope and an expanded product portfolio which, building on its foundation in RF integration, will span power management, connected sensors, optical transceivers, antenna tuning and RF front-ends.
“We’ve challenged the pSemi team to broaden their scope, increase their intellectual property (IP) portfolio and grow on a global scale to support more semiconductor innovations,” says Norio Nakajima, senior executive VP, module business unit at Murata. “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,” he adds. “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.”
The 4 billionth chip was shipped in an order to Samsung. Also, in January the firm’s founders published a research paper that served as the foundation for Peregrine’s UltraCMOS technology platform. “Over a span of three decades, many industry firsts were achieved, such as CMOS switches, SOI power amplifiers and mmWave beam-forming,” notes CEO Stefan Wolff. “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,” he adds. “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... With pSemi, we are building the ‘dream team’ of engineers, and we need more talented people to join us.”
