Elonics the RF semiconductor company is pleased to announce the appointment of John Carey as a Non Executive Director on to its Board of Directors. John is respected throughout the global semiconductor industry as being a key contributor to the development of some of the World’s leading semiconductor companies which include AMD, IDT and Wolfson Microelectronics.

In 1969 John co-founded Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) which now has global revenues of $5.8 billion and is the world’s second largest supplier of microprocessors after Intel.  In 1980 John was the lead investor for Integrated Devices Technology (IDT) where he served as CEO, COO and Chairman. Today IDT has annual revenues of $780 million. In 1998 John joined the Board of Wolfson Microelectronics becoming Chairman in 2000, overseeing its development to become a successful global player in the mixed signal semiconductor industry with annual revenues of $192 million.

David Srodzinski, CEO and Founder of Elonics said, “John Carey has been an investor and mentor to Elonics since early 2008. His appointment as Director comes as Elonics matures and develops its customer base. John’s insight and expertise in developing successful global operations will continue to make a valuable contribution to the future growth of Elonics.”

John Carey, the newly appointed Non Executive Director to the Board said, “I recognised strong potential in the early stages of Elonics comparable with the early stages of my previous companies. Since the release of their product to market this year, the growth of Elonics early customer base is a testament to the high quality technology that they develop and the company is in a strong position to capitalise in today’s markets.”

About John Carey - John Carey was born and brought up in Liverpool, UK. After graduating in 1957 from the University of Liverpool in Electronics and Electrical Engineering, John took up a two year apprenticeship with GEC which culminated in a placement as a member of the germanium transistor development group in Hazel Grove. John was passionate about this technology but realised that most of the work done in this field at the time was in Silicon Valley, California.  To get a job in the States however he was required to have savings of $1000 of which he was lacking so he decided to take an interim position in the Autumn of 1959 with the Northern Electric Company in Montreal, Canada.

John’s initial intention was to spend two months in Canada as a stepping stone to get to California but he ended up spending four years helping start up businesses in germanium and then silicon transistors, culminating in planar silicon transistors. Here John honed his skills in semiconductor manufacturing operations.

In 1963, whilst on vacation in California, John  secured a position with Fairchild Semiconductors finally reaching the destination he had been aiming for.  Fairchild were pioneering integrated circuits and were a major influence on the development of Silicon Valley.   At the time Fairchild was one of three start-ups trying to develop integrated circuits. The other two were Texas Instruments and Motorola. Over the next five years John worked as the manufacturing manager with several product lines reporting to him including one for 10 transistor logic ICs on 5/8” wafers.

In 1968 there was a change in management at Fairchild and John along with seven other people left the company to start up AMD where John was responsible for Operations and Manufacturing. In 1969 AMD got their first funding to develop more complex digital devices including microprocessors.  To put it in context, in the same year, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, the founders of Fairchild, went on to found Intel. John stayed at AMD for 10 years to 1979 seeing the company progress through a successful IPO in 1972 and a secondary offering which listed on the New York stock exchange in 1979. Today AMD has global revenues of $5.8 billion and is the world’s second largest supplier of microprocessors after Intel.

John took a short retirement from the industry but quickly caught the bug again in 1980. Through a network, he heard about a company called IDT set up by two ex-Hewlett Packard guys whose ambition was to replace NMOS with CMOS technology. They brought to the table high speed CMOS targeting 16k SRAM giving the benefit of speed of NMOS but at a fraction of the power consumption and this was aimed at the military markets.

Following his initial investment in 1982 John became CEO of IDT overseeing revenue growth from $0-200 million and taking the company by 1984 through their first IPO and  subsequent secondary offering in 1986.  In 1989 John became Chairman and by the time he stepped down in 1998  IDT had revenues close to $1 billion with 5000 employees.

Again, after IDT, John took a short break from the industry but not for long. Through an investment banker who had taken IDT public, John was introduced in 1998 to Wolfson Microelectronics. He invested and followed through the investment in the following two placements. During this time he met David Milne whom he worked alongside in a hands on role to IPO Wolfson in 2003. John was Chairman of Wolfson between 2000 and 2008 and today Wolfson is a respected global player in the mixed signal semiconductor industry with annual revenues of $192 million.

In 2007 John Carey was introduced by David Milne to David Srodzinski, Founder and CEO of Elonics a fabless mixed-signal semiconductor company specialising in the design and development of multi-band radio frequency (RF) IC products.  He began investing in Elonics early in 2008 and today joins the Board as Non-executive Director bringing to Elonics his wealth of knowledge and experience of developing multinational semiconductor companies .

About Elonics - “Wireless Silicon for a Digital Age”
Elonics Ltd. is a fabless mixed-signal semiconductor company specialising in the design and development of multi-band radio frequency (RF) IC products. Founded in 2003 and based in Livingston, United Kingdom, Elonics has developed an innovative radio frequency architecture called DigitalTune™ that is the foundation for a family of re-configurable CMOS RF front end products.

Elonics innovative technology allows manufacturers to design high performance multi-band radio transceivers with unrivalled power consumption and low system cost.  Elonics products are targeted at high volume portable consumer electronics applications that require wireless multi-media connectivity where size, performance, price and power consumption are paramount.  Elonics’ first product family is the E4000 series of silicon tuner solutions targeted at the reception of multi-standard digital TV and radio including DVB-T, ISDB-T, T-DMB, DVB-H, ISDB-T, DMB-T, DAB and FM radio. 

About DigitalTune
Elonics DigitalTuneTM is a patent pending radio frequency architecture that enables the design of multi-band RF front ends using a single monolithic CMOS IC.  The digitally programmable multi-band architecture is used in the E4000 tuner family to cover the complete spectrum from VHF II to L Band (64 MHz to 1.70GHz) for mobile broadcast applications.  DigitalTune™ is a universal architecture, and is capable of supporting other RF applications where re-configuration is highly desirable.

The direct conversion zero IF architecture is designed to save power and lower system cost.  It eliminates the requirement for expensive and bulky external components such as SAW filters and RF baluns, yet offers extremely high performance.  Elonics’ innovative DigitalTune™ architecture enables manufacturers to significantly improve upon today’s solutions offering support for multiple standards with a common re-configurable RF front end.

Further information:
Julian Hayes, Elonics Ltd., Alba Centre, Alba Campus, Livingston, EH54 7EG, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 (0) 1506 402 360. Email: julian.hayes@elonics.com

Press information:
Ann Gowans, Elonics Ltd., Alba Centre, Alba Campus, Livingston, EH54 7EG, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 (0) 1506 402 360. Email: ann.gowans@elonics.com