Intersil is an American

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

company headquartered in

Milpitas, California Milpitas (Spanish for or little cornfields) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, part of Silicon Valley and the broader San Francisco Bay Area. Located on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, it is bordered by San Jose, California, S ...

. , Intersil is a subsidiary of Renesas. The previous Intersil was formed in August 1999 through the acquisition of the semiconductor business of Harris Corporation. Intersil is a

power management Power management is a feature of some electrical appliances, especially copiers, computers, computer CPUs, computer GPUs and computer peripherals such as monitors and printers, that turns off the power or switches the system to a low-power ...

IC business, with specialized capability in power management and precision analog technology for applications in industrial, infrastructure, mobile, automotive and aerospace.

Company history

The original Intersil, Inc. was founded in 1967 by the Swiss physicist

Jean Hoerni Jean Amédée Hoerni (September 26, 1924 – January 12, 1997) was a Swiss-born American engineer. He was a silicon transistor pioneer, and a member of the "traitorous eight". He developed the planar process, an important technology for reliably ...

to develop digital watch

Integrated Circuits An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

(ICs). The European subsidiary Eurosil was originally partially funded by SSIH, a Swiss watch company. Later-on, Intersil had a development contract with the Japanese company Daini Seikosha and became supplier of low-voltage

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss ", , ) is a type of MOSFET, metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) semiconductor device fabrication, fabrication process that uses complementary an ...

watch ICs for

Seiko , commonly known as Seiko ( , ), is a Japanese maker of watches, clocks, electronic devices, and semiconductors. Founded in 1881 by Kintarō Hattori in Tokyo, Seiko introduced the world's first commercial quartz wristwatch in 1969. Seiko is ...

. When

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

s emerged to the market in the 1970s, Intersil participated with its

12-bit Before the widespread adoption of ASCII in the late 1960s, six-bit character codes were common and a 12-bit word, which could hold two characters, was a convenient size. This also made it useful for storing a single decimal digit along with a si ...

IM6100, which was the first microprocessor produced in CMOS technology and emulated the

PDP-8 The PDP-8 is a family of 12-bit minicomputers that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units sold during the model's lifetime. Its basic design follows the pi ...

instruction set. In 1988, Intersil was taken over by Harris Semiconductor, which had offered the IM6100 as second source. Harris combined these activities with the semiconductor divisions of Radiation Incorporated,

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

and

RCA RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...

they had taken over before. In 1999 Harris spun off its entire semiconductor division and Intersil Corporation was created with the largest IPO in American semiconductor industry history. The second Intersil Corporation is a different company from the original Intersil, Inc. Next to digital circuits like microprocessors and memories like the 1k-bit CMOS RAM IM6508 and CMOS EPROMS IM6604/IM6654 Intersil designed famous analogue ICs like the ICL8038 waveform generator. A creation of Intersil (as Harris Semiconductor) is the PRISM line of

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

hardware: that group of products was sold to GlobespanVirata in 2003, and maintained by Conexant. Intersil is the manufacturer of the RCA (CDP)1802

(also known as RCA COSMAC), a CPU traditionally used in space applications. In the 2000s, Intersil established market leadership in Vcore power management for PCs, switching and buck boost regulators for industrial and consumer power systems, and radiation hardened analog and power ICs for military and commercial applications. The company, under CEO Dave Bell, then began the expansion of a catalog analog business. The company also completed a series of acquisitions, two of which are still part of the portfolio, Zilker Labs digital power devices and Techwell automotive and security and surveillance products. In May 2002, Intersil Corp. acquired Elantec Semiconductor. In March 2004, Intersil Corp. acquired analog chipmaker Xicor Inc. for about $529 million. In 2012, with revenue in decline, the company's board of directors removed Dave Bell and began a search for a new CEO. In March 2013, the board appointed Necip Sayiner, the architect of Silicon Labs' turnaround, as CEO. Sayiner concentrated the company's efforts on power management and select target markets. The company was able to return to profitability in 2013 and in early 2014 re-launched as a power management company, with products to improve power efficiency, extend battery life and reduce size. Japanese semiconductor company Renesas acquired Intersil on February 24, 2017.

Products

Intersil develops and markets

and analog technology for applications in the industrial, infrastructure, mobile, automotive and aerospace markets. The company supplies power integrated circuits including battery management, computing power, display power, regulators and controllers and power modules; as well as analog components such as amplifiers and buffers, proximity and light sensors, data converters, timing products, optoelectronics and interface products.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Companies based in Milpitas, California Technology companies established in 1999 Semiconductor companies of the United States Palm Bay, Florida Superfund sites in California 2017 mergers and acquisitions 2000 initial public offerings American subsidiaries of foreign companies 1999 establishments in California

Company history

Products

See also

References

External links