<span class="customappText"><p>T.J. Rodgers is founder, president, CEO,
and a director of Cypress Semiconductor Corporation. He is a former
chairman of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and sits on
the board of directors of high-technology companies, including Silicon
Light Machines (light-switching ICs), Bloom Energy (fuel cells),
Provina (advanced, net-based home winemaking) and SunPower Corp.
(advanced solar cells). He is a member of the board of Dartmouth
College, his alma mater.</p>
<p>Rodgers was a Sloan scholar at Dartmouth, where he graduated as
Salutatorian with a double major in physics and chemistry. He attended
Stanford University on a Hertz fellowship, earning a master's degree
(1973) and a Ph.D. (1975) in electrical engineering. At Stanford,
Rodgers invented, developed, and patented VMOS technology, which he
sold for cash and royalties to American Microsystems Inc. (AMI). He
managed the MOS memory design group at AMI from 1975 to 1980 before
moving to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), where he ran AMD's static RAM
product group until 1982.</p>
<p>Dr. Rodgers' U.S. patents include: US7045387 - Method of performing
back-end manufacturing of an integrated circuit (2006); US6903002 -
Low-k dielectric layer with air gaps (2005); US6847218 - Probe card
with an adapter layer for testing integrated circuits (2005); US6835616
- Method of forming a floating metal structure in an integrated circuit
(2004); US6730545 - Method of performing back-end manufacturing of an
integrated circuit device (2004); US6185126B1 - Self-initializing
RAM-based programmable device (2001); US6131140 - Integrated cache
memory with system control logic and adaptation of RAM bus to a cache
pinout (2000); US5977638 - Edge metal for interconnect layers (1999);
US5835401- DRAM with hidden refresh (1998); US4764248 - Rapid thermal
nitridized oxide locos process (1988); US4222063 - VMOS Floating gate
memory with breakdown voltage lowering region (1980); US4222062 - VMOS
Floating gate memory device (1980); US3975221 - Low capacitance V
groove MOS NOR gate and method of manufacture (1976); US3924265 - Low
capacitance V groove MOS NOR gate and method of manufacture (1975) and
US3878552 - Bipolar Integrated Circuit and Method (1975).</p>
<p>Rodgers was the founding CEO of Cypress in 1982 and has since built
it into an international supplier of high-performance, mixed-signal,
programmable solutions with nearly 6,000 employees. Called "a
quintessential entrepreneurial company" by The Wall Street Journal,
Cypress and its management team have received many awards for
excellence in financial management. These include an Encore Award from
the Stanford University Business School as entrepreneurial company of
the year in 1988; an Entrepreneur of the Year award from the global
consulting company, Ernst &amp; Young, in 1991; three Bronze Awards and
two Silver Awards from The Wall Street Transcript for outstanding
management; and a Kachina Award from market-research company In-Stat
Inc. for excellence in financial management. In 2005, Cypress was named
one of the "100 Best Corporate Citizens" in the U.S. by Business Ethics
magazine.</p>
<p>In its October 2001 issue, Upside Magazine cited Rodgers as one of
the "100 People Who Changed Our World." Financial World magazine named
Rodgers CEO of the Year in 1996. In 2002, Rodgers was named to a list
of the year's "Top 100 Chief Executives" by Chief Executive magazine. 
In 2005, Rodgers was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering
Council Hall of Fame.  In 2006, he was honored with a Fellow Award from
the International Engineering Consortium.</p>
<p>Rodgers has testified before Congress five times. A proponent of
free markets, he twice advocated the elimination of corporate subsidies
in testimony before the House Committee Ruling on Science, Space, and
Technology, presenting to the committee in 1993 and 1991. Rodgers again
condemned corporate subsidies in 1997 at hearings by a subcommittee of
the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. In a similar vein, in
1990, he argued against antitrust exemption for the U.S. Memories
cartel in testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Economic
and Commercial Law. In a presentation to the Senate Judiciary Committee
in 1998, Rodgers supported a proposal to raise the ceiling on the
number of electronics engineers permitted to enter the U.S. on special
visas, maintaining that the influx of talent increased the competitive
advantage of U.S. high-technology companies. Rodgers' testimony-along
with his contributions to a broad spectrum of national and
international business and news publications-are available on the
Cypress website at <a href="http://www.cypress.com/portal/server.pt?space=CommunityPage&amp;cached=true&amp;parentname=CommunityPage&amp;parentid=3&amp;in_hi_userid=1&amp;control=SetCommunity&amp;CommunityID=201&amp;PageID=202">www.cypress.com</a> under the "From the CEO" category.</p>
<p>Rodgers has been cited for his achievements in supporting the
philosophy of capitalism and freedom, and for his contributions to
philanthropic and other nonbusiness groups." In 2001, Rodgers received
the Silicon Valley Capitalism Award for "exemplifying the virtues of
capitalism and defending capitalism with ethical principles in the
media." Also that year, Rodgers was presented with an Angel Award by
the International Angel Investors organization for his venture-capital
activities supporting the semiconductor industry, and the inaugural
Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Smith Center for Private
Enterprise Studies at California State University at Hayward. He joined
a short list of scholars, including Milton Friedman, in receiving an
Honorary Degree in Social Sciences from the University of Guatemala for
his numerous essays on the topics of capitalism and freedom.  He
received an Outstanding Individual Entrepreneurship Award from the U.S.
Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship in 1997, and the
City of Santa Clara, California named him Entrepreneur of the Year in
1986. </p>
<p>Rodgers has been a passionate defender of shareholder rights,
addressing the subject repeatedly in his speeches and writings. In
1996, Rodgers took a Catholic nun to task for suggesting that the
Cypress Board of Directors lacked ethnic and gender diversity. In a
far-ranging letter to the nun, which later became the focus of a page
one story in The Wall Street Journal, Rodgers argued that attempts to
make corporations more socially responsible prevent them from
maximizing profits-and therefore from rewarding shareholders. He
returned to the theme in a 1997 opinion piece for The New York Times,
criticizing Colin Powell and the Clinton administration for a proposal
to mandate corporate contributions to philanthropic causes. In the
article, "Holding Up the Shareholder," Rodgers argued that
subordinating shareholder value to social responsibility cheats both
shareholders and society at large.<br> <br>Outside business, Rodgers
was the first Silicon Valley CEO to lead Santa Clara County's Second
Harvest Food Bank Corporate Challenge event. In 2005, Rodgers chaired
the event for a second time, garnering the Food Drive Chair Recognition
Award. Cypress won its 15th consecutive victory in 2006 for the most
pounds of food donated per employee. </p>
<p>In 2007, Rodgers received the Star Award for Extraordinary Support
of the Green Scholars Program. The program is an initiative of the
California Alliance of African American Educators and focuses on
advancing educational opportunities for African American students
pursuing careers related to math, science or technology. The alliance
also recognized Rodgers as a Special Corporate Honoree for 2007. </p>
<p>Rodgers received awards from the Healing Institute for his support
of the [George Washington] Carver Scholars Program in 2000, 2001 and
2002. Between 1998-2001, he was honored with annual appreciation awards
from the Westside Kickers Track Club, a team of inner-city athletes
from Oakland, Calif., whose training and travel to regional and
national competitions was underwritten by Cypress. The Kickers club won
the USA Junior Olympic Championship in 2000.</p>
<p>In 1999, Rodgers' support of a team of underprivileged students from
San Jose-based Broadway High School helped the group to capture the
Silicon Valley Regional Championship in a national competition to build
robots. The competition was sponsored by the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration and NASA's Ames Research facility. The Broadway
team went on to win the Silicon Valley Regional Champion Award in 2000
and 2001, capturing the Lonestar Regional Champions Award in 2000; a
Southern California Regional Champions Award in 2001; and second place
in the National Championship in 2001. </p>
<p>In 2000, Rodgers set up computer facilities with Internet access for
economically disadvantaged Northern California student groups, donating
equipment and money to the East Palo Alto Computer Lab and the Girls
Club of the Mid-Peninsula.</p>
<p>In 2004, Cypress inaugurated the Cypress Semiconductor Spinal Cord
Rehabilitation Gymnasium at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in
California. A year later, the company donated funds to help the medical
center establish a mobile prenatal clinic.</p>
<p>Rodgers' public presentations include a 2002 speech criticizing
accounting practices mandated by the Federal Accounting Standards
Board; it was delivered to the Stanford Directors' College and
published by the libertarian Cato Institute under the title "Corporate
Accounting: Congress and FASB Ignore Business Realities" (see <a href="http://www.cypress.com/portal/server.pt?space=CommunityPage&amp;cached=true&amp;parentname=CommunityPage&amp;parentid=3&amp;in_hi_userid=1&amp;control=SetCommunity&amp;CommunityID=201&amp;PageID=202">www.Cato.org</a>)."
His November 1998 speech, "Why Silicon Valley Should Not Normalize
Relations with Washington DC," was the keynote address at an event
cosponsored by Cato and the Economist magazine. </p>
<p>Rodgers' speech, "Let Our Options Go!" was delivered in 1994 to a
grassroots rally in Silicon Valley supporting broad-based
employee-equity programs. At that time, it helped to kill FASB's
attempt to force companies to expense stock options on their income
statement. His 1990 speech, "The American Semiconductor Industry:
Winner or Whiners?" was delivered to a meeting of the American
Electronics Association in Seattle, Washington, and took his own
industry to task for competitive losses to Japan during the late 1980s.
Speaking to the June 1989 graduating class at Dartmouth College,
Rodgers' "An Entrepreneur's View of American Competitiveness" extolled
the virtues of entrepreneurial initiative. </p>
<p>Rodgers' personal interests include movies; cooking, especially
Italian, French, and Chinese cuisine; collecting wines, notably French
burgundies; and tending his three Pinot Noir vineyards, with which he
intends to produce wines surpassing those in his collection. He is a
member of the Board of Visitors and Fellows at the Department of
Viticulture and Enology, University of California, Davis. In addition,
Rodgers is an avid jogger, logging four to six miles daily.</p></span>