National Semiconductor
Encyclopedia : N : NA : NAT : National Semiconductor
Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, National Semiconductor is one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers. The company creates high-value analog devices and subsystems. National's leading-edge products include power management circuits, display drivers, audio and operational amplifiers, communication interface products and data conversion solutions. National's key markets include wireless handsets, displays and a variety of broad electronics markets, including medical, automotive, industrial, and test and measurement applications.
National Semiconductor was founded on May 27, 1959 by several engineers who came from Sperry Rand Corporation. Over the years they acquired several companies like Fairchild Semiconductor (in 1987), and Cyrix (in 1997). However, over time National Semiconductor spun off these acquisitions. Fairchild Semiconductor became a separate company again in 1997, the Cyrix microprocessors division was sold to Via Technologies of Taiwan in 1999. The Information Appliance Division (highly integrated processors "internet gadgets") was also sold to AMD in 2002. Other business like digital wireless chipsets have also been recently closed down, as National has reincarnated itself as an high performance analog semiconductor company.
Products
- analog circuits
- *operational amplifiers
- *buffers
- *comparators
- *display circuits
- *regulators
- *voltage references
- audio circuits
- computer peripherals
- microcontrollers
- network products
- data converters
- temperature sensors
See also
External links
- [Official site]
- [Scott Fishers 1979 picture of National Semiconductors, "Datachecker computer" used for supermarket scanning systems in the USA. Competition was IBM and NCR]
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