Cypress Founder and President T. J. Rodgers Honored with IEC Fellow Award at DesignCon 2006.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The International Engineering Consortium (IEC) awarded Cypress Semiconductor Corporation's founder, president, chief executive officer, and director, Dr. T. J. Rodgers, with the IEC Fellow Award last week, before his keynote address at DesignCon 2006. Honored with the most prestigious award from the IEC, Rodgers received his award in front of hundreds of industry professionals.

IEC Fellow and IEC Senior Board Member Karl Martersteck, who presented the award to Dr. Rodgers, said, "We're honored and pleased to have T.J. join the ranks of the IEC Fellows. The IEC Fellow Award is reserved for individuals who have provided the industry with a superior level of sustained, significant service, especially in the fields of education, technology, and industry leadership."

Dr. Rodgers joined other distinguished fellows such as Vint Cerf, John Chambers, Irwin Jacobs, Jack Kilby, Scott McNealy, Gordon Moore, David Packard, Hector Ruiz and Andrew Viterbi.

After receiving the tribute from the IEC, Dr. Rodgers delivered a keynote address to DesignCon attendees, where he discussed the confluence of several factors -- including rising oil costs, higher electricity demands in developing countries, and concerns about global warming -- that have resulted in an energy crisis.

He told the audience that he believes that solar power's time has come and that Silicon Valley will lead the way in helping to solve the problem.

Dr. Rodgers, former chairman of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), also sits on the board of directors of high-technology companies, including SolarFlare Communications (10-gigabit Ethernet), Silicon Light Machines (light-switching integrated circuits (ICs)), Ion America (fuel cells), Infinera (optical ICs), and SunPower Corp. (advanced solar cells). He is a member of the board at Dartmouth College, his alma mater.

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 vertical metal oxide semiconductor (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.

Rodgers was the founding CEO of Cypress in 1982 and has since built it into an international integrated circuit supplier with nearly 4,500 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, including 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 & 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 United States by Business Ethics magazine. 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.

About DesignCon 2006

Taking place annually in Silicon Valley, DesignCon serves as the premier event for practicing engineers in the electrical design and semiconductor communities. Broadening the scope to address business as well as technical issues of the industry, DesignCon 2005 hosted more than 110 exhibiting companies and drew nearly 5,000 industry professionals to register. This year with more than 100 sessions and tutorials and more than 200 industry leaders to speak, DesignCon 2006 expects more than 125 companies to exhibit and more than 6,000 industry professionals to register. Visit www.designcon.com/2006.

About the IEC

A nonprofit organization, the IEC is dedicated to catalyzing technology and business progress worldwide in a range of high-technology industries and their university communities. Since 1944, the IEC has provided high-quality educational opportunities for industry professionals, academics, and students.

In conjunction with industry-leading companies, the IEC has developed an extensive, free online educational program. The IEC conducts industry-university programs that have substantial impact on curricula. It also conducts research and develops publications, conferences, and technological exhibits that address major opportunities and challenges of the information age.

More than 70 leading high-technology universities are IEC affiliates, and the IEC handles the affairs of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) and Eta Kappa Nu (HKN), the honor society for electrical and computer engineers. The IEC also manages the activities of the Enterprise Communications Consortium. Visit www.iec.org.

About Cypress Semiconductor Corporation

Cypress solutions are at the heart of any system that is built to perform: consumer, computation, data communications, automotive, industrial, and solar power. Leveraging a strong commitment to customer service and performance-based process and manufacturing expertise, Cypress's product portfolio includes a broad selection of wired and wireless USB devices, complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors, timing solutions, network search engines, specialty memories, high-bandwidth synchronous and micropower memory products, optical solutions, and reconfigurable mixed-signal arrays. Cypress stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CY. More information about the company is available at www.cypress.com.