John A. Rollwagen, the former chairman of Cray Research Inc., will announce Monday that he will become chairman of Plasma and Materials Technologies, a Chatsworth, Calif., semiconductor equipment manufacturer.
Rollwagen was one of several high-profile computer industry executives, including John Sculley of Apple Computer Inc. and John F. Akers of International Business Machines Corp., to leave their companies last year. He said Friday in a telephone interview that the new position would be a part-time one and that he would continue to live in the Minneapolis area.
He said Plasma and Material Technologies, which makes exotic machines for depositing and etching materials on the surfaces of silicon wafers used in making computer chips, had a feel similar to the one at Cray Research when he joined the supercomputer-maker in the mid-1970s.
“They’ve proven that they have a product that makes sense,” he said. “Now it’s a business. I hope I can help them grow the business.”
In October, Plasma and Materials Technologies was awarded a contract by Sematech, the industry-government consortium designed to provide technical aid to the American semiconductor industry. The company also is licensing its technology for some applications to both American and Japanese equipment-makers.
In January 1993, Rollwagen, who is 53, left his position at Cray Research after he was nominated by President Clinton for the position of deputy secretary of commerce. But after five months of acting as deputy secretary, Rollwagen resigned, saying he was unwilling to put up with the Washington political environment.
Rollwagen said he had been working as an adviser to St. Paul Venture Capital, a financial group that is an investor in Plasma and Materials Technology.
He said he also was working as an adviser to several other companies, including Broadband Technologies Inc., a maker of fiber-optic communications gear in Research Triangle Park, N.C., and APP Group, a computer systems integrator in Prague.
