Global Semiconductor Alliance Appoints New Leadership to Emerging Company CEO Council

“It is an honor to have the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of an outstanding leader like Dennis,” said Ralph Schmitt. “We both know these are challenging times for smaller companies in the semiconductor industry. It is my belief that this group can guide by delivering solutions to assist innovative, emerging companies to succeed in the globalization and transformation of the fabless business model. These are exciting times, with opportunities for our industry to transform business models to deliver life-altering, innovative technology. The rules of the game are changing, and the ECCEO Council is driven to ensure that we address how to stay ahead of these changes and enable this group of companies to be successful,” added Schmitt.



Ralph Schmitt has been president and chief executive officer of PLX Technology since November 2008, where he has led the company into new markets and record revenue levels. During 2008, he consulted with a variety of venture capitalists, as well as acted as chief executive officer of Legend Silicon, a privately funded Chinese terrestrial digital TV semiconductor company. From 2005 through 2007, he was chief executive officer of Sipex, an analog semiconductor company which he led through a transformation that resulted in their relisting and release of integrated power products and record revenue. Sipex merged with Exar in 2007, where he was appointed chief executive officer.



From 1999 to 2005, Schmitt was executive vice president of Sales, Marketing and Business Development for Cypress Semiconductor, where he led sales growth to more than $1.4 billion, the migration of the company to a system-level product supplier and oversaw the acquisition and integration of numerous companies. Schmitt has also served on the boards at Cypress subsidiaries and other privately held semiconductor and systems companies. He began his career as a systems hardware designer and received his BSEE from Rutgers University.



“The Emerging Company CEO Council is an integral part of GSA and the semiconductor industry as a whole,” said Matt Rhodes. “I look forward to contributing to the development of strategies for industry-wide solutions to the most critical challenges facing smaller, emerging companies in the semiconductor industry; in particular, the decline of capital investments while the need for new innovation, high-risk technology and product development continues to grow.”



Matt Rhodes is chief executive officer of Semitech Semiconductor Pte Ltd. and brings a proven track record of leading business and product development teams through the process of developing advanced communications ICs through to market-winning positions. Mr. Rhodes was appointed president and chief executive officer of Teranetics in 2006. Prior to joining Teranetics, Mr. Rhodes was the president of Conexant Systems, where he was responsible for the marketing, engineering and operations of a communications IC business of nearly $1 billion annually. During his tenure at Conexant, the teams he led held or developed significant IC product positions in a variety of communications technologies, including dial-up modems, xDSL, Wireless LAN and Digital Broadcast Satellite.



Previous to Conexant, Mr. Rhodes served as director of VLSI technology at Pacific Communication Sciences, Inc, a wireless system development company that pioneered communications IC products for PHS handheld phones, Secure Digital Radio and Cellular Packet Data. He received an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles and also holds an M.S. in electrical engineering from Lehigh University and a B.S. in physics from Pennsylvania State University.



The Council is comprised of 22 leading CEOs from global emerging companies to advise GSA's board of directors on emerging company needs and to support GSA's focus on entrepreneurship. In 2011, the Council will focus on alternatives for small, successful companies to exit and expand; strategies for dealing with the escalation of development costs and funding requirements; and the impact of the globalization of emerging companies’ suppliers, customers and markets.