Craig Ensley Joins Peregrine Semiconductor As President, C.O.O.

San Diego -- Peregrine Semiconductor announced that Craig H. Ensley has joined its executive team as President and Chief Operating Officer, and has been elected to the board of directors. Ensley has 30 years of broad experience in the semiconductor and systems technology industries, spanning venture capital start-ups to multi-hundred-million dollar public corporations. Most recently Craig was with Cirrus Logic, where he led repositioning of the firm to be a highly profitable mixed-signal analog IC company. He brings to Peregrine a vision for disruptive semiconductor technology, a strategic and product planning background, knowledge in executing high-growth businesses, and leadership and team-building skills. Ensley will be responsible for leading Peregrine's operations in order to meet the market's demand for UltraCMOS RFICs.

"We set out to fill a tall order: to find an individual with not only a strong background ramping a startup IC company, but also an understanding of the complex issues associated with a billion dollar company," said Jim Cable, C.E.O. of Peregrine Semiconductor. "Craig's relevant mixed-signal product experience, global business relationships, and comprehensive understanding of the IC industry made him an ideal candidate. His impressive ability to establish a vision and motivate a corporation toward operational excellence made him the right choice for Peregrine. His leadership, loyalty and extraordinary sense of fundamental business operations will ensure that the foundation upon which we are building Peregrine is rock solid, and poised for the decade ahead," he added.

"The Peregrine opportunity is an intensely exciting and challenging one," said Ensley. "The high performance mixed-signal business is large and growing; our growth markets – such as mobile handsets and broadband RF – are innovative and leading-edge; and our proprietary UltraCMOS technology is truly revolutionary. The talent in the company is unmatched in our industry. Couple these facts with the momentum Peregrine has developed in the recent couple of years, and I'm thrilled at the opportunity to join the team," he added.

Prior to Ensley's position as Senior Vice President of Cirrus Logic, he was an executive in the team which started Crystal Semiconductor, a mixed-signal IC company which pioneered high performance analog IC design using industry-standard CMOS wafer processing. At Crystal, Ensley was initially Vice President of Marketing and subsequently General Manager of several divisions. Previously Ensley led Marketing for the semiconductor division of Rockwell International where his team started and built a position as a supplier of modem ICs. Ensley has an M.B.A. from Stanford University and B.S. degrees in both Applied Physics and Economics from the University of California at San Diego.

SOURCE: Peregrine Semiconductor Corporation