Sehat Sutardja, Marvell co-founder, chiplet pioneer has died, aged 63

News | September 23, 2024

By Peter Clarke

Chiplets

Sehat Sutardja, the Indonesian born co-founder of Marvell Technology and of Silicon Box amongst other companies has died suddenly, aged 63.

Marvell is a highly successful fabless chip company and the recently-formed Silicon Box is a foundry operation based in Singapore that is pioneering chiplet-style manufacturing. Silicon Box is also planning to come to Europe.

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Having graduated from college in Jakarta in1980 Sutardja went to the US to gain an MSc from University of California, Berkeley, where he also met his wife to be, Weili Dai.

Sutardja worked at Micro Linear Corp. and Integrated Information Technology before founding Marvell with Dai and his brother Pantas Sutardja from his kitchen table in 1995. The company grew both organically and by a series of acquisitions and is now in the top 20 chip companies worldwide by revenue. Always an engineer at heart Sehat Sutardja had more than 440 patents in his name and was a fellow of the IEEE.

In April 2016 CEO Sehat Sutardja and President Weili Dai were forced to step down from their posts at Marvell amid an internal accounting investigation after activist investor Starboard Value Fund took a stake in the company. An investigation found no fraud. Sutardja and Dai moved on from Marvell to entrepreneurship and continued to receive praise and respect from their peers in the industry.

In recent years Sutardja and Dai have been active in the formation of a network of startup companies that can create a complete ecosystem for chiplet-style advanced packaging. Some of the companies are known – such as Silicon Box, Alphawave, Blue Cheetah Analog Design, DreamBig and Expedera. Another dozen or so startups are taking their first steps but must now continue without the support of an effective mentor.