NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR

National Semiconductor NASDAQ NSC was known for its analog devices and subsystems and was a pioneer in the semiconductor industry that took its final manufacturing operations of IC's to developing countries. Its focus was less on innovation and more on taking the existing inventions of companies like Fairchild and Texas Instruments and improving on them. Fairchild's talent pool was often raided in order to help them accomplish this. In fact National Semi even acquired Fairchild in 1987 then spun it off again. National Semi was eventually acquired Texas Instruments in 2011 for $6.5 billion in cash.