LSI Logic

LSI Logic Corporation, an American company founded in Milpitas, California, was a pioneer in the ASIC and EDA industries. It evolved over time to design and sell semiconductors and software that accelerated storage and networking in data centers, mobile networks and client computing.

On May 6, 2014, LSI Corporation was acquired by Avago Technologies (now known as Broadcom Inc.) for $6.6 billion.

History

1981–2004

In 1981, Wilfred Corrigan, Bill O'Meara, Rob Walker and Mitchell "Mick" Bohn founded LSI Logic Corporation in Milpitas, California. Wilfred Corrigan served as the CEO from 1981 until 2005. LSI was initially funded by venture capitalists, including Sequoia Capital, with $6 million. A second round of funding from Sequoia Capital as well as a number of companies from England came In March 1982, bringing in another $16 million.

The initial plan called for a line of CMOS gate arrays created from “masterslices” which were uncommitted transistors customized to a specific application by the deposition of unique metal interconnections. The intention was to have the masterslices manufactured by external semiconductor companies and then do the metallization themselves. In order to jump start the business, they licensed an existing CMOS gate array design and reverse engineered and improved on the Motorola ECL array.

The initial EDA flow was based on TEGAS simulation and place and route from Silvar-Lisco. Integrated on Megatek hardware the first interactive CAD system was called (LSI Design System) LDS. What made them unique from other ASIC vendors at the time was that they willing to ship the software to their customers rather than keeping it in-house, which was the strategy used by market leaders at the time. In 1982 they started development of their own in-house CAD tools and moved to Silicon Graphics hardware. By 1988, the EDA industry had developed enough that customers wanted to be able to use 3rd party tools.

Sales grew rapidly and they were able to launch a successful initial public offering on the Nasdaq exchange in May 1983 that brought in $153 million. Stock symbol: LSI.

In 1985, the firm entered into a joint venture with Kawasaki Steel—Japan's third largest steel manufacturer—to build a $100 million wafer fabrication plant in Tsukuba, Japan.

In 1987, SEMATECH (Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology) was incorporated partially in result of the 1984 National Cooperative Research Act, which reduced potential antitrust liabilities of research joint ventures. SEMATECH is a research and development consortium to advance semiconductor and chip manufacturing. LSI Logic was among the 14 founding members, but withdrew from SEMATECH in January 1992.

In December 1987, MIPS Computer Systems brought on LSI Logic as a licensee to ability to fabricate the R2000 and R3000 chipsets and provided a license to implement the MIPS I instruction set architecture (ISA) in ASIC form.

In July 1991, LSI entered into an agreement with Sanyo Electric of Japan to make a set of chips that translate an HDTV signal into a television image.

LSI Logic started developing its CoreWare technology in 1992. In 1993, Sony Computer Entertainment chose LSI Logic as their ASIC partner, charged with fitting the PlayStation CPU on a single chip. LSI's CoreWare could do it, while other offers made to Sony needed two chips. Sony also worked with LSI's engineers develop the graphics engine, DMA controller, I/O and bus controllers.

In 1995, LSI Logic acquired the remaining shares its Canadian subsidiary held, which amounted to 45%. In 1997, Mint Technology, an engineering services company, was acquired by LSI. In August 1998 it bought Symbios Logic from Hyundai Electronic for $760 million cash. In February 1999, LSI acquired Seeq Technology, adding physical-layer based Ethernet technology to LSI's product line. In May 2000, LSI acquired IntraServer for $70 million, with expectations to add their rapidly expanding customer base to LSI's own.

In November 2000, LSI acquired Syntax Systems, and in August 2001 the groups merged to become LSI Logic Storage Systems, and later Engenio Information Technologies.

In March 2001 LSI acquired C-Cube for $878 million in stock. In that same quarter, LSI introduced Gflx, a flexible process technology.

In September 2001 LSI acquired a RAID adapter division from American Megatrends in a $221 million cash transaction. Included in this deal, LSI received AMI's MegaRAID software intellectual property, host bus adapter products and 200 RAID employees.

LSI and Storage Technology Corporation (StorageTek) entered an alliance making StorageTek the distributor of their co-branded storage products in January 2002. In August 2002 LSI acquired Mylex from IBM, to expand its storage technologies.

In November 2003, LSI sold its Tsukuba, Japan facility to ROHM Company, Ltd.

The Engenio division of LSI filed for its own IPO in 2004, but withdrew citing adverse market conditions after the burst of the dot-com bubble.

2005 to present

May 2005, Abhi Talwalkar joined the company as president and CEO, and was also appointed to the board of directors. Talwalkar was an executive at Intel Corporation before joining LSI, and began a program of acquisitions and divestitures.

October 2005, LSI Logic opened a semiconductor design and engineering development center at the Dubai Silicon Oasis (DSO) Microelectronics Innovation Center.

April 2006, LSI Logic sold the Gresham, Oregon design and manufacturing facility to ON Semiconductor for $105 in cash

October 2006, LSI Logic agreed to an all-stock merger with Agere Systems worth about $4 billion.

March 2007, LSI Logic acquired SiliconStor Inc., a provider of semiconductor solutions for enterprise storage networks, for approximately $55 million in cash.

April 2007, LSI Logic completed its merger with Agere Systems Inc., who previously owned LSI's Mobility Products Group, and rebranded the firm LSI Corporation.

July 2007, Magnum Semiconductor Inc. a spin-off of Cirrus Logic Inc., acquired LSI's consumer products business and 13 percent of LSI's workforce. These lines included architectures named DoMiNo and Zevio, evolutions of the C-Cube Microsystems technology.

August 2007, LSI signed an agreement with STATS ChipPAC Ltd to sell its Pathumthani, Thailand semiconductor assembly and test operations for $100 million. In October 2007, LSI acquired Tarari, a maker of silicon and software, for $85 million in cash. Tarari's products integrated into LSI's NSPG organization.

October 2007 LSI completed its sale of its Mobility Division to Infineon Technologies AG (Munich) for $450 million in cash. Approximately 700 LSI employees transferred to Infineon in the deal.

July 2009, LSI agreed to acquire ONStor, Inc. for $25 million. LSI put ONStor into its Engenio storage division, which is a NAS vendor. LSI bought the 3ware RAID adapter business of Applied Micro Circuits Corporation in April that same year.

March 2011, LSI announced its sale of its Engenio external storage systems business to NetApp for $480 million in cash. The sale of the Engenio division, which generated revenues of $705 million in 2010, completed in May.

January 2012, LSI completed the acquisition of SandForce, which produced flash memory controllers (for $370 million reported in October 2011). LSI started producing its own PCIe cards for data center servers, using SandForce's flash controller chips, under their new Nytro product line that April. This included three different products: LSI Nytro WarpDrive Application Acceleration Cards, LSI Nytro XD Application Acceleration Storage Solution, and LSI Nytro MegaRAID Application Acceleration Cards.

On December 16, 2013, Avago Technologies (which later acquired Broadcom Corp, and then renamed itself as Broadcom LTD, then in 2018 changed its name to Broadcom Inc.) announced it would be acquiring LSI Corporation for $6.6 billion in cash. The transaction closed on May 6, 2014.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lsi Corporation
Computer storage companies
Fabless semiconductor companies
Defunct computer companies based in California
Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States
Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Companies based in Milpitas, California
American companies established in 1981
Computer companies established in 1981
Electronics companies established in 1981
Technology companies established in 1981
Computer companies disestablished in 2014
Electronics companies disestablished in 2014
Technology companies disestablished in 2014
1981 establishments in California
2014 disestablishments in California
Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
2014 mergers and acquisitions
American subsidiaries of foreign companies