Silicon Systems Inc. (SSi) (not to be confused with SiliconSystems, Inc.) was an American

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 based in

Tustin, California Tustin is a city located in Orange County, California, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In 2020, Tustin had a population of 80,276. The city is located next to the county seat, Santa Ana, and does not include the unincorporated community ...

. The company manufactured

mixed-signal integrated circuit A mixed-signal integrated circuit is any integrated circuit that has both analog circuits and digital circuits on a single semiconductor die.telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

and

data storage Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are conside ...

Company history

Seagate ST9300AG - SSI 32R2020R-4CL inside the disk case-9326

Silicon Systems was founded and incorporated in California on May 17, 1972 by Gene B. Potter, Ronald H. Reeder, and William E. Drobish. SSi grew to 146 employees and $10.5 million in revenue in 1980. Its

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

was on January 29, 1981. The company became a supplier of

integrated circuits An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

(ICs) for computer disk drives, touch-tone receivers, vehicle loop detectors, and other applications from

garage door opener A garage door opener is a motorized device that opens and closes a garage door controlled by switches on the garage wall. Most also include a handheld radio remote control carried by the owner, which can be used to open and close the door from a ...

s to descrambling satellite broadcast signals. The company was acquired by

TDK Corporation is a Japanese multinational electronics corporation that manufactures electronic components and recording and data-storage media. Its motto is "Contribute to culture and industry through creativity". "TDK" is an initialism of the original Ja ...

in on May 15, 1989 for $200M. The company grew to an annual revenue of $400 million as of 1996. It owned wafer fabrication plants in Tustin and

Santa Cruz, California Santa Cruz (Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 62,956. Situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is a pop ...

, an assembly and test facility in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

, and design facilities in San Jose and

Grass Valley, California Grass Valley is a city in Nevada County, California, United States. Situated at roughly in elevation in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, this northern Gold Country city is by car from Sacramento, from Sacramento I ...

. In 1996,

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...

(TI) acquired the storage products portion of SSi in a deal worth $575 million. TDK retained the communications products business as TDK Semiconductor Corporation (TSC). In 2005, TSC was purchased by

Golden Gate Capital Partners 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 ...

and renamed

Teridian Semiconductor Teridian Semiconductor Corporation (TSC) is a brand of mixed-signal ICs, primarily for energy-management markets, manufactured by Silergy Corporation, formerly owned by Maxim Integrated Products. Products Teridian metrology system-on-chip (SOC) so ...

. In 2010, Teridian was purchased by Maxim Integrated Products for $315M in cash. The Teridian energy measurement products group was then sold to Silergy Corporation on March 18, 2016. The founders of Silicon Systems came from

Scientific Data Systems Scientific Data Systems (SDS), was an American computer company founded in September 1961 by Max Palevsky and Robert Beck, veterans of Packard Bell Corporation and Bendix, along with eleven other computer scientists. SDS was an early adopter of i ...

. MicroSim Corporation spun off from Silicon Systems in 1984. In 1998 MicroSim was acquired by OrCAD Systems Corporation. Silicon Systems Inc. had no relation to another and more recent company named SiliconSystems, Inc. which was founded in 2003, made

solid-state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is ...

s (SSDs), and was eventually acquired by

Western Digital Western Digital Corporation (WDC, commonly known as Western Digital or WD) is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology produc ...

Early designs

Designs for integrated circuit houses

Source: *256-bit and 1024-bit ECL

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * Ra ...

for

Signetics Signetics Corporation was an American electronics manufacturer specifically established to make integrated circuits. Founded in 1961, they went on to develop a number of early microprocessors and support chips, as well as the widely used 555 time ...

*bipolar test chip for

Scientific Micro systems Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

*Interface Vector Byte (SMS360) for

SMS300

microcontroller A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs (processor cores) along with memory and programmable i ...

series which later became the

Signetics 8X300 The 8X300 is a microprocessor produced and marketed by Signetics starting 1976 as a second source for the SMS 300 by Scientific Micro Systems, Inc. Although SMS developed the SMS 300, Signetics was the sole manufacturer of this product line. In ...

*second source

Transistor–transistor logic Transistor–transistor logic (TTL) is a logic family built from bipolar junction transistors. Its name signifies that transistors perform both the logic function (the first "transistor") and the amplifying function (the second "transistor"), as opp ...

designs for

Advanced Micro Devices Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufact ...

:8-bit addressable latch (Silicon Systems first chip completed) :8-bit parallel output shift register :synchronous 4-bit up/down counter *8288 bus controller for

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Designs for end users, with SSi supplying the completed circuits

*digital loop detector for Indicator Controls Corporation ::the first fully integrated traffic detector ::the first chip checked with SSi's proprietary rules checking software *5 chips for

Hughes Aircraft Company The Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded on February 14, 1934 by Howard Hughes in Glendale, California, as a division of Hughes Tool Company. The company was known for producing, among other produ ...

, Culver City *digital video processor for

, Canoga Park *S14001A speech synthesis chip for the Speech+ Calculator of

Telesensory Systems Telesensory Systems, Inc. (TSI) (later'' TeleSensory Corporation'') was an American corporation that invented, designed, manufactured, and distributed technological aids for blind and low vision persons. TSI's products helped visually impaired pe ...

*video editing time code generator for EECO, Inc. (Electronic Engineering Company of California) *output interface chip for

Opticon reader for the blind *garage door opener digital transmitter and receiver chips for Linear Corporation *VLA1 and VLA2 correlator chips for

Very Large Array The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is a centimeter-wavelength radio astronomy observatory located in central New Mexico on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, ~ west of Socorro. The VLA comprises twen ...

of the National Radio Observatory *barricade flasher controller chip for Royal Industries, Inc. *DC011 and DC012 integrated electronics for

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...

VT100 The VT100 is a video terminal, introduced in August 1978 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was one of the first terminals to support ANSI escape codes for cursor control and other tasks, and added a number of extended codes for special f ...

computer terminal *digital loop detector (second generation) for Detector Systems, Inc. *SC-01 speech synthesis chip implementing vocal tract model for

Votrax Votrax International, Inc. (originally the Vocal division of Federal Screw Works), or just Votrax, was a speech synthesis company located in the Detroit, Michigan area from 1971 to 1996. It began as a division of Federal Screw Works from 1971 to 19 ...

Division of Federal Screw Works

Designs proprietary to SSi

*SSi 101 servo preamplifier for hard disk drives *SSi 104/105 4 channel read/write head interface for hard disk drives *SSi 201

Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) is a telecommunication signaling system using the voice-frequency band over telephone lines between telephone equipment and other communications devices and switching centers. DTMF was first developed ...

DTMF receiver for telephony ::the first fully integrated DTMF receiver implemented with

switched capacitor A switched capacitor (SC) is an electronic circuit that implements a function by moving charges into and out of capacitors when electronic switches are opened and closed. Usually, non-overlapping clock signals are used to control the switches, so ...

filters

Early employees

Early employees of Silicon Systems included:

Locations

*February 1973 to December 1976: 2913 Daimler St., Santa Ana, CA *December 1976 to April 1979: 16692 Hale Ave., Irvine, CA *October 1977 to April 1979: Gary Ave., Irvine, CA - Design Engineering and Personnel *May 1978 to April 1979: 16832 Red Hill Ave., Irvine, CA - Advanced Development *April 1979 onward: 14351 Myford Rd., Tustin, CA

References

{{reflist

External links

COMPANY NEWS;$575 MILLION DEAL FOR TDK SEMICONDUCTOR UNIT (New York Times)
Semiconductor companies of the United States Defunct companies based in Greater Los Angeles Companies based in Orange County, California Electronics companies established in 1972 1972 establishments in California 1989 disestablishments in California Electronics companies disestablished in 1989 1989 mergers and acquisitions