Mr. Rodgers' neighborhood.

After a brief tumble, Cypress Semiconductor is back in the black and gunning for $1 billion in sales. But the chieftain of this warrior tribe isn't a kindly gentleman in a cardigan sweater. He's more like a cross between his favorite movie characters - Robocop, Terminator, and The Great Santini.

"You've got to see this," says a secretary, ushering a visitor into a spacious corner office in the San Jose, CA, headquarters of chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor. Atop a bookcase rests a small jar of petroleum jelly. A polite description of the sticker on the jar is impossible; suffice it to say, it indicates the emollient is for employees who face a drilling from the CEO who stalks these halls. A glance around the room completes a cursory profile of the executive in question, who's wrapping up a meeting in an adjacent conference room, visible through a glass partition. On one wall hangs a framed 1993 Fortune cover, which describes him as one of "America's Toughest Bosses." There are cans of dog food labeled to reflect the products of other chip makers, and in a corner a Navy practice bomb stenciled in white paint with the names of Cypress' competitors. The meeting adjourns, and a fireplug of a man in shirtsleeves with short-cropped blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses strides purposefully into the room and thrusts his hand toward the visitor: "How are you?" he says. "I'm T.J. Rodgers."

The introduction is cordial but unnecessary. Throughout his career, Thurman John Rodgers has been a popular figure both in the business press and in such general-interest publications as Esquire. Pound-for-pound, he seems to attract as much coverage as anyone in Silicon Valley, despite the fact that 12-year-old Cypress is hardly the largest or the most successful company in these parts. That's because its most famous product isn't the memory chips it churns out for computers and other high-tech equipment; it's 46-year-old Rodgers himself, who packs as much panache into his 5'9" frame as his company crams circuits onto a silicon wafer. In an industry marked by jet-setters and marketing wizards such as Jerry Sanders of Advanced Micro Devices and Intel's Andy Grove, Rodgers commands attention, because he bellows loudest and displays flashes of technical brilliance. If Herb Kelleher is the king of corporate madcap, Bill Gates the prototypical eccentric genius, and Jack Welch the agent provocateur of re-engineering, Rodgers is an unlikely, outrageous mix of Newt Gingrich and Stephen Hawking, with a dash of tough-guy Arnold Schwarzenegger thrown in. At one time or another, he has lined up in his cross hairs the Clinton-Gore administration, a brigade's worth of his peers, the Sematech consortium, big-company "dinosaurs," and Cypress staffers foolish enough to be less than letter-perfect. In so doing, he frequently sets new standards for audacity. There was the near-fistfight with AMD's Sanders in a Palo Alto parking lot in 1983, shortly after Rodgers left the company, taking several senior staffers with him. There was the time he had white stretch limousines escort Russian businessmen to Cypress headquarters, where he rolled out a real red carpet. There was Rodgers, ceremoniously protected by armed guards, distributing the company's quarterly profit sharing in gold coins. And there are the jogging shorts he loves to be photographed in, fashioned in red, white, and blue after the American flag.

On the bleeding edge or bloody outrageous? Everything T.J. does is "absolutely calculated" to raise Cypress' profile, says Dan McCranie, Cypress' vice president of sales and marketing, who was CEO of $40 million Seeq Technology before Rodgers lured him away 15 months ago. A longtime friend of the boss, McCranie worked with Rodgers at the now-defunct American Microsystems and later at AMD. When asked about Rodgers' epic abrasiveness - employees typically have the durability of stock cars at a Sunday afternoon demolition derby, or they don't stick on the Cypress track - McCranie chuckles: "Some of us have carbuncled backsides. We don't need the Vaseline as much."

Rodgers founded Cypress Semiconductor in 1982 and guided the company through a period of rapid growth - conspicuous because it coincided with the sharp decline in market share by U.S. companies versus the Japanese. Priding itself on all-American operations while competitors were shifting to less-costly facilities overseas, the company avoided price competition by focusing on niche markets ignored by larger manufacturers, and by turning out superfast memory chips - the Maseratis of the business. Seeking to maintain start-up intensity as sales grew to several hundred million dollars, Rodgers computerized operations and structured Cypress as a string of independent companies, each with its own stock, relying on the corporate center to supply venture capital. Wall Street swooned, saluting him as a prototype for a new breed of CEO and his company as a model for others.

Rodgers scoffs at the notion he was spoiled by success, but does allow he pushed some wrong buttons. Like the early experimental jets flown by his hero, pilot Chuck Yeager, Cypress plunged earthward in a flameout. "I did not have the 50,000-foot view, and we got caught," the CEO says.

Lower-cost competitors raided Cypress turf. The independent units played low-ball on chip purchases from Cypress factories. Amid the turmoil, the company posted red ink in 1992 of $21 million. Rodgers moved quickly, absorbing spin-offs, shifting chip-testing and assembly to Thailand, and slashing his work force by more than a third. He also beat a retreat from microprocessors - the most glamorous chip market - selling a Cypress subsidiary to Japan's Fujitsu.

The kick in the tail did the trick: Operating income has improved for seven consecutive quarters. Sales last year were expected to top $400 million; net income is projected to be $47 million or better, up some fivefold from 1993. Rodgers is edging into new businesses, snapping up smaller, specialty companies, and jacking up manufacturing capacity. Perhaps most important, in a resurgent American industry, Cypress is building velocity to escape the crowded ranks of midsize circuit makers and seeking to top $1 billion in revenues by 1997.

By no means is the effort a sure thing. Attaining the sales target depends on solid growth in Asian and European markets, where Cypress has a relatively low profile and Rodgers' in-your-face style may do more harm than good. (Imagine T.J. loping through France in running gear l'Americain.) In a market known for its cyclical swings, Cypress' new-product pipeline occasionally has clogged, opening the door for other companies to beat it to market. And a spate of smaller start-ups are nipping at the company's heels, much as Cypress once plagued larger competitors. "I would love the pesky little companies that bug the crap out of me not to start up," Rodgers says. "But there they are."

A retooled Cypress supplies chips for markets including personal computers, telecommunications, instrumentation, and military systems. Though expanding, it remains a little splash in a big pond: America's largest companies - AMD, Intel, Motorola, National Semiconductor, and Texas Instruments - comprise roughly one-third of a global $100 billion market. Cutthroat competition has compressed Cypress' margins: Prices of some static random access memory chips, or SRAMs, are one-quarter of those in 1991. But innovative process technology and the move offshore have cut production costs and cycle times in half over the period. Some newer market segments, including data communications, offer the possibility for explosive growth as computers are linked via local networks. Overall, the company's prospects are strong.

"T.J. is bright, he works his ass off, and he has a good grip on business and engineering," says Jay Deahna, who follows Silicon Valley for Prudential Securities in San Francisco. Adds Morgan Stanley's Alan G. Rieper: "The ongoing migration to very high-speed microprocessors, including Pentium, is driving an increased need for high-speed SRAMs." SRAM chips - used to store and retrieve data at a high rate of speed - account for approximately 40 percent of Cypress' sales.

"He's kind of audacious," says an industry expert, who insists he not be named. With good reason. When an analyst or journalist rubs Rodgers the wrong way, they may win a lifelong time-share in the CEO's doghouse. "There's somewhat of a cult of personality surrounding T.J.," the expert continues. "In some ways, that's no different than the other 42 CEOs in the chip industry. But for a while, T.J. got a little out of control."

It's just past 9 at Cypress headquarters on a Monday morning, and Rodgers already has worked up a lather, having risen at his customary 5:59 a.m.: one minute to wake up, five minutes for the national news on CBS' San Francisco affiliate, a quick shower, and a 25-mile drive to work from his Woodside home. Another drive to a boat basin on an inlet near the Pacific Coast, and the CEO mugs for a camera as a photographer fires rolls of film. Squinting hard in the glaring sunshine, it's clear T.J. has done this before. He seems to anticipate requests for poses: hands in pockets, three-quarter profile, elbow on knee. There's a meeting at 11 a.m., and Rodgers' handler gets edgy. "You're the boss," jokes an observer to the CEO. "Tell them you'll be late." Putting words in Rodgers' mouth - an infrequent occurrence at best - the indignant aide-de-camp sniffs: "Obviously, you haven't read T.J.'s book, 'No-Excuses Management.'" The shoot ends; Rodgers leaps into his Honda Accord and speeds off.

Back at headquarters, Rodgers talks about his 1992 book, along with the potholes he hit after it was complete. It's evident he entertains no alibis from his managers - a core value at Cypress scrawled in the blood of those who have offered them. Neither, however, does he tolerate them from himself (Sentinel software designed to penalize staffers for incomplete tasks once cut off Rodgers' paycheck.) Chapter 8 of "No Excuses Management" outlines Rodgers' problematic blueprint for Cypress as a federation of independent units. He says he's going to write another book when the company turns 20. "One of the statements that's going to be in there is: 'Chapter 8 was bullshit.'"

"Bullshit" is one of the boss' favorite words, often serving sequentially as noun, verb, and adjective. Despite competitors' barbs - perhaps because of them - there's a frat-boy arrogance the CEO revels in. Rodgers always seems to be holding forth on something; detractors snigger that it's often himself. Given his command of technological minutiae and market fundamentals, however, and the bone-crunching pain he's inflicted on competitors who have zoned him out, generally someone is paying attention. When asked by an analyst at a cocktail party to describe an anticipated clash of Cypress and Sanders' AMD on the microchip battlefield, Rodgers responded: "We will ride into his village, burn his huts, rape his women, and dance on the bones of his children." Would he take it back? Not a chance. "I enjoy telling the story too much," he says.

Clearly, Rodgers enjoys talking about Sanders and other CEOs, violating the clubby, closed-door atmosphere most take pains to preserve. Opinion is divided on whether this comprises self-defense or dishing dirt. "I still see AMD working to undermine us every chance they get," Rodgers says. "I believe that the cultural trait is propagated from the top." Reversing roles, he slips into an imitation of Sanders talking about him. "Just remember," he says, "I don't like that little son of a bitch, and anytime you have a chance, take your shot." Sanders declined to respond to Rogers' salvo, though he did liken the Cypress CEO in print several years ago to mob boss John Gotti and Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. But a spokesman for $2.13 billion AMD, John Greenagel, says Rodgers' bitterness stems from a successful patent infringement suit brought by AMD against Cypress several years ago. When Cypress was taking it in the chops in 1992, Greenagel adds, "Jerry felt it was a maturation process for T.J. Jerry and T.J. are not the best of friends, but Cypress is just another competitor, and a rather small one at that."

The smashmouth culture at Cypress, and the lieutenants Rodgers surrounds himself with, are an extension of the boss. More than a few combat-ready recruits - even those handpicked by Rodgers - have washed up on the beach, obliterated by 80-hour work weeks, brass-knuckled confrontations with fellow executives, and "wolf pack" job interviews in which Cypress staffers team to push candidates beyond the breaking point. "You want to make sure you don't hire a fragile flower," says VP McCranie. Even the CEO comes under the microscope; in fact, he encourages scrutiny. "There's nothing that nauseates me more than a sycophant," Rodgers says. Micromanagement tops the list of beefs, a proclivity Rodgers says he developed in the start-up phase, when he had to run everything, but vows he snuffed out years ago. Some staffers beg to differ. "If you're willing to let him do your job for you, he just might," says Tony Alvarez, vice president of research and development. Observes CFO Manny Hernandez, "T.J. has his fingers on everything."

Make no mistake: Rodgers' troops insist his relentless drive and attention to detail help pad their pockets. At Cypress, profit sharing tied to corporate performance is distributed equally among employees: Rodgers, for example, gets no more than any of the company's 1,250 employees. For his part, the CEO feels boot-camp discipline builds character. Outside Cypress, Rodgers has three passions: family, jet planes, and the big screen. Logically, his favorite movie, "The Great Santini," combines elements of all three. Rodgers recalls with affection the scene from the film in which Santini, a blustering Marine Corps sergeant played by Robert Duval, lines up his children and describes to them how they differ from other kids. "You eat nails," Santini says. "The other kids eat cotton candy." Doubtless, Cypress staffers don't care much for sweets.

Ironically, Rodgers chafed at authority early on. A quote in his high-school yearbook reads, "I hate when people encroach on my personal freedom." Briefly, this contrarian strain burst into outright rebellion, underscored by his support of ultradove presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972. Young Rodgers also showed glimmers of entrepreneurial vision: At age 11, his mother, Lois Rodgers, paid him $3 to cut the lawn. But she made the mistake of paying him up front. When she returned from shopping, Rodgers says, she found that T.J. had gone to the corner market, purchased a watermelon for 50 cents, invited some neighborhood kids over, and had them do the work in exchange for a snack. T.J. pocketed the $2.50 difference. As a teenager, there were more sophisticated endeavors, including a still on nearby Lake Winnebago. "Thurm-O-Flare" smoke bombs, made in the high-school chemistry lab, were a hot item until T.J. blew up the lab and landed in the hospital.

Looking ahead, Rodgers anticipates the continued vitality of smaller technology companies. He fully expects the U.S. to retain its market-share edge against the Japanese: U.S. companies supply 48 percent of the world's semiconductors and the Japanese 36 percent, a dramatic swing from six years ago. Politically, Rodgers' stake in the American dream prompted a sharp about-face. He advocates a near-libertarian commitment to the free market and fiercely opposes government abridgments of personal and economic freedom.

For himself, Rodgers prescribes perpetual evolution. If the transformation lags, he predicts he will fall victim to the same forces that undermined The Great Santini. "Santini had intelligence, guts, and discipline," Rodgers says. "Yet he had a fatal flaw. He didn't fit into a peacetime world. And he was incapable of adapting."

As Cypress grows larger, is Rodgers headed for the extinction to which he once consigned his dinosaur competitors? The fall would not be without precedent. Petulant rigidity sabotaged Steve Jobs, Philippe Kahn, and other technology enfants terribles, and Cypress' Alvarez notes, "Sometimes T.J. gets locked into an idea, and I'd pay hell to get him unlocked." The tech boss, however, holds out hope. "There's a classic scene in start-ups where the company outgrows the CEO," he says. "Early on, there was behavior that hindered the corporation. But T.J. figured out there's another way to do it. He will do whatever it takes in terms of his own behavior to change."

"My fundamentals haven't changed," Rodgers insists. "I think maturation is a good description. I've learned to control my temper to some degree; the dilution in my bloodstream of testosterone and adrenaline has made me a bit more human."

Rodgers adds he's sifting through his character much the way he sifted through his belongings before recently moving into a new home. "In 1982, my responsibility was to create a business plan. My office was my dining room table," he says. "What the company needs from me now is different. I have to morph myself every year just to keep my fingernails on the edge. I'm going to get on with it."

RELATED ARTICLE: CHIP SHOTS

" - T.J. Rodgers on being named one of America's toughest bosses by Fortune magazine in 1993: "For 24 hours, I was totally pissed off. But I read it again, and I didn't mind it. In fact, I have the cover mounted on my office wall."

- On making enemies: "With the guys I've nettled over the years, there were a lot of rocks flying over the fence."

- On industrial policy: "We have a president who can't manage the travel office of the White House. You tell me: How are Bill Clinton and Al Gore going to manage the technology industry?"

- On employee relations with the boss: "There's nothing I can't tolerate more than a butt-kissing vice president."

- On being politically correct: "Political correctness is a religion. It is a set of beliefs that aren't based on facts and that are almost always ass-backwards."

- On employee empowerment: "Anytime you hear a happy-face human-resources person talking about empowerment, just think 'moron.'"

- On employee motivation: "I had a concern that maybe hard-assed Marine Corps sergeants like T.J. Rodgers were only good from zero to $200 million, and after that, you needed to be Ben & Jerry's. That's a misconception."

- On the information superhighway: "We need one, but not a government boondoggle."

- On the ideal Executive Information System: "I want to be able to walk into my office, and say, 'Hal, give me a listing of all patents issued to Intel in 1994.'"

- On shifting some operations to Thailand: "We began as an all-American company, which meant every job. But we have to be international to be competitive."

- On consolidation in the chip industry: "Some guys give you the 'GM pitch'; 'There's only going to be three car companies, and you can't afford to be a car company forever.' They're wrong."

- On the U.S. chip war versus Japan: "We win, big time."