April 17, 2007 – Malaysian foundry Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. has appointed Tzu Yin Chiu, former SVP/COO of Hua Hong Semiconductor International, as its new president/COO to oversee the company’s R&D programs and worldwide operations. Before his work at Hua Hong, Chiu was SVP of Shanghai operations at SMIC, and before that was director of TSMC’s Fab 4 and senior director of TSMC’s Fab 5 facilities. He holds 10 semiconductor patents (three additional ones pending), and is a senior member of the IEEE.

“[Chiu’s] remarkable achievements in semiconductor technologies and track records at TSMC and SMIC are well known in the industry,” said Eg Kah Yee, CEO of Silterra, in a statement. “His impeccable credential has already generated a lot of excitement within Silterra, and we have already received strong endorsement from our key customers. With him aboard, we are ready to realize our new vision and deliver innovations.”

Days ago Silterra also appointed Charles Chan as president of subsidiary Silterra USA, to spearhead the foundry’s sales operations in the US. Chan’s career path mirrors that of Chiu — he also came from Hua Hong International as VP of foundry outsourcing, and had started up SMIC’s US sales office as VP of its Americas unit. Before that he, too, was at TSMC, as senior account manager for strategic accounts. He also has background at Intel and Micron.

In January Silterra appointed Yee, founder and CEO of ASIC/SoC design company Key ASIC, as CEO and executive director, replacing Bruce Gray, who held the position since July 2005 after serving two years as EVP and COO. Key ASIC signed a partnership with Silterra last spring to offer IP including ARM-based CPU platform and memory blocks for 0.18- and 0.13-micron CMOS process technologies.