The SOI Industry Consortium, an industry organization representing the complete silicon-on-insulator (SOI)-based microelectronics value chain, has announced awards to two luminaries of the semiconductor industry - Jim Cable, Chairman, and CTO of pSemi, a Murata Company, and Herb Huang, CEO and GM of Ningbo Semiconductor. Both of them received awards for their contributions to the advancement of RF-SOI, a leading technology used extensively in chips for cellular communications.
The awards were given during a gala following the SOI Consortium's annual RF-SOI Workshop in Shanghai. The Workshop, which was attended by over 450 industry leaders from China and around the world, is the largest of the SOI Consortium events. Jim Cable drove the development of SOI and RF switches that are now in every cellphone, and Herb Huang has been a key contributor to SOI technology and a champion of the SOI foundry ecosystem here in China.
Jim Cable joined pSemi (formerly Peregrine Semiconductor) in 1996 and held technical leadership roles before serving as CEO from 2002 to 2017. An early pioneer of SOI technology, Cable believed SOI would ultimately replace other technologies in the RF front end, and he pushed his team to innovate. Cable is a co-inventor on more than 70 semiconductor and technology patents, including breakthroughs in SOI-based processes for CMOS RF switch linearity and integration that are used by all smartphones today, and will become even more mission-critical in 5G and millimeter-wave markets. He received his B.S. in physics from UC Riverside and his master's degree and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from UCLA.
Herb Huang is CEO of Ningbo Semiconductor International Corporation (NSI), which is based in Ningbo, China. A driver of the RF-SOI ecosystem in China, he spent much of his career at Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), the largest semiconductor foundry company in mainland China. In 2016, SMIC created NSI as a joint venture subsidiary with China IC Investment Fund, Ningbo Economic Development Zone Industrial Investment Company, Ltd. and other IC investment funds. Under Huang's leadership, NSI optimized the process and model of a 0.13um RF-SOI technology platform transferred from SMIC. Now in mass production, the RF-SOI technology platform supports customers in IC design and product development for new generations of radio communications. Huang holds both a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering and an MBA from the University of Minnesota.
