David Eggleston CEO, Unity Semiconductor

Unity Semiconductor Corporation, a memory technology development company, announced its new leadership team. David Eggleston has been named as Chief Executive Officer, and Christophe Chevallier, as Chief Operating Officer. Dr. Louis Parrillo, former head of Spansion’s flash memory R&D organization, joins Unity as Chief Technology Officer.

For the last eight years, Unity has been developing CMOx, a solution for non-volatile solid state memory to replace NAND. CMOx is designed to scale beyond the limitations of the legacy transistor technology currently used in NAND flash memory. The power of CMOx resides in its novel physics that enables small geometry, multi-layer cross-point memory arrays with higher density, faster performance, lower manufacturing costs, and greater reliability.

"Unity has matured to a stage where the company requires a management team that can take the company’s key technology, CMOx, to commercialization. These three executives bring a combination of over 80 years of highly successful technical experience leading R&D in the flash memory industry at companies including Micron Technology, Spansion, Advanced Micro Devices, SanDisk, ST Microelectronics, and Motorola Semiconductor. This team is implementing a business strategy at Unity that will enable CMOx to surpass transistor-based flash memory, and play a significant role in the $20 billion and growing market for flash memory in electronic devices. We are excited to name these three accomplished executives to lead the company," said Charles C. Pope, Unity Semiconductor board director and retired EVP and CFO of Seagate Technology.

"Unity will provide its technology and production know-how to memory semiconductor companies as part of a broad licensing program, and will also directly sell specialized CMOx memory products to the storage markets," said David Eggleston, Unity’s Chief Executive Officer. "We are very optimistic about the future for CMOx and the opportunities that lie ahead to accelerate its commercialization."

 Dr. Louis Parrillo joined Unity in 2011 as Chief Technology Officer. Before joining Unity, he was Executive Vice President of Research and Development at Spansion, Inc. where he was responsible for technology development and strategic alliances. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and a recipient of professional awards including the IEEE Frederik Philips Award and the J. J. Ebers Award from the IEEE Electron Devices Society. Dr. Parrillo was with Motorola Inc. for 19 years and held various executive management roles, including Division General Manager and Semiconductor Chief Technology Officer. Earlier in his career, he was a key scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Dr. Parrillo received his PhD. and a MS at Princeton University and has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Connecticut.

 David Eggleston is the Chief Executive Officer of Unity, and a member of the Board of Directors. He joined the company in 2007 as Vice President of Engineering and Marketing, and he was appointed CEO in 2010. He has been an angel investor in Unity since the founding of the company in 2002. Prior to joining Unity, Mr. Eggleston built and spearheaded the NAND Systems Engineering organization at Micron for 12 years. Mr. Eggleston has built and managed R&D organizations at successful non-volatile memory start-ups MQD (acquired by Micron) and SanDisk. Mr. Eggleston received his MS in Electrical Engineering from Santa Clara University, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Duke University.

 Christophe Chevallier is a co-founder of Unity, which he joined in 2002 as Vice President of Product Development. Mr. Chevallier was appointed Chief Operating Officer of Unity in 2010. He designed one of the world’s first NOR Flash products at non-volatile memory company Catalyst and later helped Micron start their Flash program, as a founder of MQD (acquired by Micron). He worked 10 years at Micron completing numerous NOR and NAND flash designs. Earlier he was a key memory designer at AMD and ST Microelectronics. Mr. Chevallier holds more than two hundred patents. He graduated with a BSEE from IMT/Universities of Aix-Marseille, France, and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.