Conexant Systems
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Conexant Systems, Inc. was an American-based software developer and
fabless Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclus ...
semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical resistivity and conductivity, electrical conductivity value falling between that of a electrical conductor, conductor, such as copper, and an insulator (electricity), insulator, such as glas ...
company that developed technology for voice and audio processing, imaging and modems. The company began as a division of
Rockwell International Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate involved in aircraft, the space industry, defense and commercial electronics, components in the automotive industry, printing presses, avionics and industrial products. R ...
, before being spun off as a public company. Conexant itself then spun off several business units, creating independent public companies which included
Skyworks Solutions On October 5, 2015, Skyworks Solutions entered a definitive agreement to acquire PMC-Sierra for $2 billion in cash. However, Skyworks walked away from the deal, having been outbid by Microsemi. On April 22, 2021, Skyworks Solutions entered into ...
and
Mindspeed Technologies Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. designs, manufactures, develops, and sells fabless semiconductors for communications applications in wireless and wired networks. Products Wireless Mindspeed’s products are used in wireless infrastructure and smal ...
. The company was acquired by computing interface technology company Synaptics, Inc. in July 2017.


History

In 1996,
Rockwell International Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate involved in aircraft, the space industry, defense and commercial electronics, components in the automotive industry, printing presses, avionics and industrial products. R ...
Corporation incorporated its semiconductor division as Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, Inc. On January 4, 1999, Rockwell spun off Conexant Systems, Inc. as a public company. It was listed on the
NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
under symbol CNXT on January 4, 1999. At that time, Conexant became the world's largest, standalone communications- IC company. Dwight W. Decker was its first chief executive officer and chairman of its board of directors. The company was based in
Newport Beach, California Newport Beach is a coastal city in South Orange County, California. Newport Beach is known for swimming and sandy beaches. Newport Harbor once supported maritime industries however today, it is used mostly for recreation. Balboa Island, Newport ...
. In the early 2000s, Conexant spun off several standalone technology businesses to create public companies. In March 2002, Conexant entered into a joint venture agreement with The Carlyle Group to share ownership of its wafer
fabrication plant In the microelectronics industry, a semiconductor fabrication plant (commonly called a fab; sometimes foundry) is a factory where devices such as integrated circuits are manufactured. Fabs require many expensive devices to function. Estimates ...
, called
Jazz Semiconductor Jazz Semiconductor is a semiconductor wafer foundry that is a wholly-owned United States subsidiary of Israel-based Tower Semiconductor. Its customers include developers of wireless, optical networking, power management, storage, and aerospace/de ...
. In June 2002, Conexant spun off its wireless communications division, which merged immediately following the spinoff with Massachusetts-based chip manufacturer Alpha Industries Inc. to form publicly held Skyworks Solutions Inc. In June 2003, Conexant spun off its Internet infrastructure business to create the publicly held company Mindspeed Technologies Inc. Mindspeed would eventually be acquired by M/A-COM Technology Solutions, based in
Lowell, Massachusetts Lowell () is a city in Massachusetts, in the United States. Alongside Cambridge, It is one of two traditional seats of Middlesex County. With an estimated population of 115,554 in 2020, it was the fifth most populous city in Massachusetts as of ...
. In 2004, Conexant merged with
Red Bank, New Jersey Red Bank is a borough in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. Incorporated in 1908, the community is on the Navesink River, the area's original transportation route to the ocean and other ports. Red Bank is in the New York Metropolitan A ...
, semiconductor company GlobespanVirata, Inc., with Conexant as the surviving corporation. Subsequently, GlobespanVirata’s name was changed to Conexant, Inc. In April 2008, Conexant announced the sale of its broadband media processing business, which provided products for satellite, cable and IPTV applications, to Dutch semiconductor manufacturer NXP Semiconductors NV. In September 2008, Jazz was sold to Israel-based Tower Semiconductor Ltd and became known as TowerJazz. In August 2009, Conexant sold its broadband access product line to Fremont, California, semiconductor company
Ikanos Communications Ikanos Communications, Incorporated, was a provider of semiconductor and software products for use in homes. It was headquartered in Fremont, California. The company’s digital subscriber line, communications processors and other products were ...
. In February 2011, an agreement was announced for
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
investment firm
Golden Gate Capital Golden Gate Capital is an American private equity firm based in San Francisco. The firm makes investments in a number of select industries, including technology, financial services, retail and industrial, through leveraged buyout transactions, as ...
to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Conexant at a price of $2.40 per share, and take the company private. In February 2013, citing the burden of servicing debt related to multiple corporate acquisitions in the late 1990s, as well as the loss of revenue from the bankruptcy of key customer
Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
, Conexant filed for
Chapter 11 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wheth ...
protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. As part of the bankruptcy agreement, the company agreed on a restructuring plan with owners and its sole secured lender, QP SFM Capital Holdings Ltd. The reorganized company emerged from bankruptcy in July 2013. As part of the operational restructuring, the company moved its headquarters from Newport Beach to nearby Irvine, and focused on a narrower product portfolio, consisting of far-field voice input processing-based devices, video surveillance and printer systems on a chip (SoCs). Since 2013, Conexant's silicon and software solutions for voice processing have been instrumental in the CE industry's proliferation of voice-enabled devices. The company's AudioSmart brand of voice input processors and embedded far-field processing software has become adopted by CE device manufacturers in numerous products ranging from Artificially Intelligent digital assistant devices and smart speakers to voice-enabled televisions and personal robots. In February 2016, it was announced that Korean electronics company
LG Electronics LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean multinational electronics company headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG Corporation, the fourth largest '' chaebol'' in South Korea, and often considered a ...
was going to integrate Conexant's CX2092x far-field voice input processor system-on-chip (SoC) into two of its smart home products: a set-top box and an
IoT The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...
hub for controlling home electronic devices. In March 2016, Conexant announced that their AudioSmart software was being integrated into Qualcomm's Hexagon digital signal processor family, a major component of Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor reportedly contained in over 1 billion smart devices. In December 2016, Conexant and Amazon co-announced the AudioSmart 2-Mic Development Kit for Amazon AVS, a commercial-grade reference solution that streamlines the design and implementation of audio front end systems. Based on the Conexant AudioSmart™ CX20921 Voice Input Processor, the dual microphone board was designed to reduce time-to-market for new third-party voice-enabled Alexa devices. On May 11, 2017, news appeared that security researchers discovered that Conexant's audio drivers were installing keylogger software, including many laptops sold by HP. The keylogger writes every single keystroke typed by a user (including passwords) and stores them in an unencrypted file on the user's computer. On July 26, 2017, Synaptics completed its acquisition of Conexant Systems, LLC. By November 2017, Conexant.com was no longer available.


Product line

Conexant had two main product families: the AudioSmart brand of audio processors and the ImagingSmart brand of image processors and modems.


AudioSmart

AudioSmart was a line of
analog-to-digital converter In electronics, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC, A/D, or A-to-D) is a system that converts an analog signal, such as a sound picked up by a microphone or light entering a digital camera, into a digital signal. An ADC may also provide ...
s (AD Converter),
codec A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or da ...
s,
USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...
digital signal processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on MOS integrated circuit chips. They are widely used in audio si ...
(DSP) codecs, voice/speech processors, and software that improved how audio signals are processed for electronic audio equipment. *AD Converters – Conexant's analog to digital converters were used for far-field voice/speech capture applications. They converted analog signals to digital in order to enhance the signal before transmitting it to third party speech recognition products. The technology is used in voice-enabled consumer products. A low power version with a standby mode and a fast wake up mode is used for battery powered devices. *Codecs – Conexant's codecs encoded and decoded digital signals, to allow transmission, storage, encryption, and playback or editing. The codecs were used to improve audio signals in tablets and PCs, and for consumer audio applications such as conferencing, streaming media and editing. *USB & I2S DSP codecs – Conexant's DSP codecs had USB and integrated interchip sound (I2S) interfaces to connect to electronic devices such as headsets and docking stations. *VoiceSpeech processors – Conexant's VoiceSpeech line of system-on-chip (SoC) speech processors added voice command capabilities to smart TVs.
Far-field The near field and far field are regions of the electromagnetic (EM) field around an object, such as a transmitting antenna, or the result of radiation scattering off an object. Non-radiative ''near-field'' behaviors dominate close to the ante ...
voice
pre-processing In computer science, a preprocessor (or precompiler) is a program that processes its input data to produce output that is used as input in another program. The output is said to be a preprocessed form of the input data, which is often used by so ...
algorithms and 24-bit analog-to-digital conversion prevent a noisy television itself from interfering with a user's commands. The company's Smart Source Pickup technology maintained speech recognition in the presence of external noise. At CES 2016, Conexant introduced a new four-microphone voice input processor for smart voice applications, which included the company's Smart Source Locator (SSL) software, which gave the chip 360-degree voice location and speech recognition within . *AudioSmart software – Conexant developed AudioSmart software, audio and voice processing technologies for far-field voice communication and far-field speech control. Applications included speech recognition for smart home, smart phone, IoT, robotic and wearable devices, voice calls using social media apps, or
Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...
calling. Conexant's AudioSmart software was available on Windows, Android and Linux operating systems.


ImagingSmart

ImagingSmart was a line of silicon and software to improve performance of image dependent electronic equipment, such as document and photo imaging controllers, digital video, and devices with integrated fax or data modems, such as printers or point-of-sale terminals. *Document and photo imaging controllers – Conexant offered products for single-function and multi-function printers, photo printers, and other advanced printers. The chips integrate input/output features, including USB and serial, and embedded firmware allows printing to shared printers using tablets or smartphones. The technology was compatible using Wi-Fi with several
cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...
printing services. *Digital video – Conexant's digital video and image encoders and HD processors were designed to improve video communications. The company also offered analog video decoders which capture and convert analog, terrestrial, and digital broadcast video. *Fax modem chips and data modem chips – Conexant's fax modem chips with VoIP support added fax modem functionality to multi-function printers. The low-power chips supported v.34 packet connectivity over enterprise networks, per the ITU-T G.1050 Network model for evaluating multimedia transmission performance over Internet Protocol. Data modem chips are deployed in point-of-sale terminals.


Operations

Conexant's headquarters was in
Irvine, California Irvine () is a Planned community, master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on ...
.


References


External links

{{Rockwell International Companies based in Irvine, California Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Electronics companies disestablished in 2017 Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States Fabless semiconductor companies Software companies established in 1999 Software companies disestablished in 2017 1999 establishments in California 2017 disestablishments in California 2017 mergers and acquisitions