• About Us
  • Company
  • Executive Team
  • Board of Directors
  • Technical Advisory Board
  • Company Background
• CMOx™ Technology
  • CMOx™ Memory Technology
  • 0.5F² Memory Cell
  • Intellectual Property
  • CMOx™ Demonstration
• BEOL Memory™
  • Overview
  • New Business Model
  • Commercialization
• Applications
  • Storage-Class Memory
  • Memory Hierarchy
  • Product Roadmap
• News & Events

Board of Directors

Darrell Rinerson; Founder, Chairman, CEO
Mr. Rinerson has worked in semiconductor memory for most of his career, including DRAMs at Mostek, EPROMs at AMD and Flash Memory at Catalyst and Micron. He started the Flash group at Micron as a subsidiary of Micron that eventually was acquired by Micron and became the Flash Memory product group. Mr. Rinerson served as VP of the Flash Memory Group, until he left Micron in 2001.

Unity was founded in 2002 by Darrell Rinerson, Ed Ward and David Bostwick. The three had worked together at AMD in the 1980’s in the EPROM group. During this period, AMD became the world’s second largest supplier of EPROMs. EEPROMs were also developed and manufactured by AMD during this time.

Mr. Rinerson founded Unity Semiconductor to address the need for next generation non-volatile memory. Unity was founded to develop a memory that could exceed NAND Flash memory in density and performance, while also achieving a lower manufacturing cost. Unity initially did research into various switching phenomena, but quickly settled on a particular switching effect that occurs in layers of metal oxides. The Unity team was successful in discovering a new phenomena that led to the CMOx™ memory cell concept. This concept was not previously anticipated in the technical literature or in the back ground patents that had previously been filed. Mr. Rinerson holds more than 60 patents on this technology and related technologies.
Mr. Rinerson has also developed the idea of the BEOL Memory™ that can lead to a new business model for data storage semiconductor memory.

Andy Rappaport, August Capital
A partner at August Capital since 1996, Andy brings technology and market experience into such areas as semiconductors, broadband communications, computer systems, and software. He has more than 20 years' experience as a founder, investor, and/or director of venture-backed start-ups, and has served on the boards of more than 40 public and private-companies. Prior to joining August Capital, Andy was involved in the formation and success of more than a dozen venture capital-backed start-ups, including Actel (ACTL), MMC Networks (Acquired by AMCC -- AMCC), Sequence Design Automation, Silicon Architects (acquired by Synopsys --SNPS), Transmeta (TMTA), and Viewlogic (Acquired by Synopsys -- SNPS). Andy is an often-cited authority on changing technologies and markets and has written and lectured extensively on the evolving structures of semiconductor, computer, and telecommunications industries. He wrote "The Computerless Computer Company," which won the 1991 McKinsey award for Article of the Year in the Harvard Business Review. Andy attended Princeton University.

Current Board Affiliations: Alta Devices, Atheros Communications (ATHR), DSM Solutions, Luxtera, Magnum Semiconductor, Scintera, Tzero, Ubicom.

Chris Schaepe, Lightspeed Venture Partners
Chris is a founder of Lightspeed, covering infrastructure technologies and services. He has seventeen years of venture capital experience and four years of operating experience. Prior to Lightspeed, Chris served in corporate finance and capital markets roles at Goldman, Sachs & Co. Previously, he was a software engineer at IBM.

Chris has frequently been named to the Forbes Midas List of top venture capital investors. He serves on a number of private company boards and one public board, Riverbed Technology, Inc.

Chris holds BS and MS degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from Stanford University.

Drew Lanza, Morgenthaler Ventures
Drew, based in Menlo Park, CA, joined Morgenthaler in 2000 and became a Partner in 2001. Drew focuses on cleantech, semiconductors and systems. He is currently a Director of Cortina Systems, Overture Networks, OmniPV, Unity Semiconductor, Autonet Mobile, SiPort, ZeroG, and R2 Semiconductor. Drew spent 15 years in senior operating positions in the telecommunications industry starting companies in both the components and the systems sectors of that industry. Drew graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with an MBA in 1987. He received his BSEE & MSEE degrees from Stanford in 1979.

L. David Sikes
David is a Principal of Exeter Consulting, specializing in consulting for technology start-up companies. In this capacity, he most recently served as the interim CEO of Mobius Microsystems, a semiconductor start-up company. Prior to his consulting work he was with Ramtron International Corporation, a specialty semiconductor company, for ten years and served as Chairman and CEO from 1995 to 2001. David graduated from MIT, earning a B.S. in Electrical Engineering with a Minor in Economics.

A major hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturer (strategic investor and board observer)