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National Semiconductor




  Company Type Public ()
  Foundation 1959
  Location Santa Clara, California , USA
  Key People Brian L Halla, Chairman and CEO
  Industry Semiconductors
  Products Semiconductors
  Num Employees 8,500
  Homepage wwwnationalcom


Headquartered in Santa Clara , California , USA , National Semiconductor is one of the largest Semiconductor manufacturers, specializing in analog devices and subsystems. National's 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.


HISTORY

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.

From 1997 to 2002 National enjoyed a large amount of publicity and awards with the development of the Cyrix Media Center, Cyrix WebPad, WebPad Metro and National Origami PDA concept devices created by National's Conceptual Products Group . Based largely on the success of the WebPad National formed the Information Appliance division (highly integrated processors & "internet gadgets") in 1998. The Information Appliance Division was sold to AMD in 2002.

Other business like digital wireless chipsets, image sensors, PC I/O chipsets have also been recently closed down or sold off as National has reincarnated itself as a high performance analog semiconductor company.


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