Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli and STMicroelectronics

This article is about the long and productive relationship Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli had with STMicroelectronics (STM) and the many exciting moments we shared with him. Alberto started working with STM when it was called SGS-ATES back in 1978; he had joined the Berkeley faculty just a couple of years earlier. Two of us (Pasquale and Philippe) were not in the company yet. In fact, Pasquale used to joke that Alberto was older than he (meaning at STM). Pasquale was called in from Motorola, where he was general manager of the International Semiconductor Division, to lead SGS in 1980 and met Alberto shortly after during one of his visits to SGS. Until then, Alberto´s contact at our company was Raimondo Paletto, who ran R&D. Philippe joined the company after the merger with Thomson, a key step in making STM one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world. Aldo and Philippe became the managers of the company´s two largest product groups: telecommunication, peripherals and automotive (TPA) and home, personal, and communication (HPC).