14 Facts About VLSI Technology

VLSI Technology, Inc, was an American company that designed and manufactured custom and semi-custom integrated circuits.

VLSI Technology was based in Silicon Valley, with headquarters at 1109 McKay Drive in San Jose.

Subsequently VLSI Technology built its first fab in San Jose; eventually a second fab was built in San Antonio, Texas.

VLSI Technology had its initial public offering on February 23,1983, in which 4,000,000 shares were sold at $13 a share.

VLSI Technology was acquired in 1999 by Philips for $21 a share, and survives to this day as part of NXP Semiconductors.

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Thanks to its Caltech and UC Berkeley students, VLSI Technology was an important pioneer in the electronic design automation industry.

In March 1991, VLSI Technology spun off its IC design tools group into a wholly owned subsidiary, Compass Design Automation.

Meanwhile, VLSI entered the merchant high speed static RAM market as they needed a product to drive the semiconductor process technology development.

VLSI Technology eventually ceded the chipset market to Intel because Intel was able to package-sell its processors, chipsets, and even board-level products together.

VLSI Technology had an early partnership with PMC, a design group that had been nurtured of British Columbia Bell.

When PMC wanted to divest its semiconductor intellectual property venture, VLSI Technology's bid was beaten by a creative deal by Sierra Semiconductor.

VLSI Technology maintained operations throughout the USA, and in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan.

VLSI Technology was the only manufacturer of chips using ARM cores at that time, as well as the only designer of ASICs using ARM.

In 1997, VLSI Technology offered the first ARM chipset for Set-top box vendors for the cable and satellite TV industries named VISTA.