Peregrine Semiconductor Corp of San Diego, CA, USA – a fabless provider of radio-frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) – has appointed two semiconductor-industry veterans as new executives. Keith Bargroff has been promoted to serve as VP of engineering, and Sumit Tomar has been hired as VP of product marketing.
Peregrine says that, since its acquisition by Japan’s Murata in December 2014, it has experienced high growth in both employee headcount and new market opportunities. As the team and product portfolio expanded, the firm has created two new senior leadership positions.
“Peregrine’s technology and product portfolio has increased substantially, and we are continuing to hire top-notch engineering talent worldwide to support our aggressive growth plans,” says chief operating officer Dylan Kelly. “For the last two years, Keith has led Peregrine’s technology platforms department, and he has the ideal background and skill set to serve as our new vice president of engineering,” he adds. “Sumit’s proven track record and his strong industry network in the wireless ecosystem will be a great asset for Peregrine.”
An over 25-year industry veteran, Bargroff is an engineering leader and designer with a broad range of market and technology expertise including RF, analog and mixed-signal semiconductors, Internet of Things (IoT) and communications, energy management and instrumentation equipment. Prior to Peregrine, he was chief technology officer at Enverv, a fabless semiconductor company that he co-founded to develop communications system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for the energy-management and IoT markets. Bargroff was also co-founder, principal engineer and director of technical strategy for RF Magic, a fabless semiconductor company acquired by Entropic Communications in 2007. He also has experience in management at Elektradyne, Wavetek and Datron Instruments and in engineering positions with IBM and Qualcomm. Bargroff has been granted 15 patents and has over 22 pending patent applications. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electronic and electrical engineering from Brunel University in London, and he completed coursework in BiCMOS analog circuit design and advanced bipolar analog integrated circuit design at Imperial College London.
Tomar is a 20-year industry veteran with a track record in marketing and product management. With a solid understanding of RF products, he has driven product execution from inception to production for hundreds of market-shaping products. From 2012 to 2016, Tomar was general manager of Qorvo’s wireless infrastructure business unit. In addition, he has worked in RF product management at Texas Instruments, Sierra Monolithics and Skyworks. Product marketing experience spans 4G/5G smartphone and radio access networks, automotive semiconductor, 802.11ax access points, SDN/NFV for data centers, and machine learning and artificial intelligence for mobile edge networks. In 2016, he co-founded C-RAN Inc, a startup that is developing a 5G RF system prototype. Tomar holds a master of science degree in electrical engineering and has completed the Stanford executive management program.
