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Timeline Summary

In the Year 1999

Infineon is born Infineon is founded on April 1st, when the semiconductor operations of the parent company, Siemens AG, were spun off to form a separate legal entity.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average adds Intel Intel is added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Intersil acquires Harris Corporation's semiconductor division Intersil Corporation name is reborn at the hand of an investment firm, and Harris spins off its entire semiconductor division and sells it to the new Intersil for approximately $700M.

Vantis is acquired by Lattice April 20th, Lattice announces acquisition of Vantis from AMD to be completed by end of the fiscal year. The purchase of Vantis began to drag down AMD's focus, causing them to lose market share and an annual drop of 19% in sales.

Philips acquires VLSI Tech June, Philips acquires VLSI Tech making it the world's sixth largest semiconductor company of the time. Philips would eventually spin VLSI out as NXP.

VIA Technologies purchases Cyrix from NSC VIA Technologies acquires the Cyrix microprocessor division from NSC only 2yrs after NSC acquires Cyrix.

ON Semi is spun off of Motorola Motorola spins off ON Semi, who continued to manufactur products for Motorola, and would become a multi-billion dollar company by the following year.

AMP merges with Tyco International AMP merges with Tyco International Ltd. These two electronics industry leaders combined would form the basis of what would be known a decade later as Tyco Electronics and would eventually change its name to TE Connectivity.

AMP acquires Raychem After AMP merges with Tyco International, Ltd. it acquires Raychem in the same year.

Power Trends is acquired by TI

In the stock-for-stock transaction based aquisition, TI issued about 1.7 million shares worth approximately $145 million in exchange for all outstanding shares of Power Trends.

Epcos is created in 1999 from Siemens Matsushita Components Siemens and Matsushita in 1989 made a joint venture in 1999 called Epcos. In 2006 Seimens and Matsushita both sold their holdings in the company. TDK acquired Epcos in 2009

Did you know?

When Werner Von Siemens, co-founder of Seimens, summited an egyptian pyramid, he stumbled accross a phenomina and with material in his lunchbox used the static charge to create a Layden jar which began to spark. His Arab guides, assuming whichcraft quickly attempted to seize Seimens companion. Seimen thought quickly and shocked the guide with the charge, throwing him to the ground. The Arab guide quickly fled and Seimen fled the territory to escape the retaliation.
Fairchild Semi was founded by 8 key ex employees of Shockley Semiconductor and about a decade later the pattern repeated as 8 key employees left Fairchild Semi to form competing company AMD.
Hitachi's logo was inspired by Japans imperial rising sun flag. The name Hitachi is actually comprised of the two words hi meaning “sun” and tachi meaning “rise”.
Mostek makes a Mistake. In age when Jobs and Wozniak were founding Apple , one company owned rights to the processors used in both the Apple and the IBM computers. In fact Mostek had secured the rights to every microprocessor family of importance, including the the Zilog Z80, Intel x86, and Mot 68000. However, Mostek did very little to leaverage their position and after years of financial troubles, would eventually be forced to sell out.
Itallian company, Thomson acted quickly purchasing Mostek and immediately opened several lawsuits around their newly acquired intellectual property portfolio. Thomson went on collected over $430 million in royalties. That same year, the semiconductor division of Thomson merged with SGS Microelecttronica to become STMicroelectronics.
Within a two year period, both Intel and AMD were started by small groups of rogue FSC employees who relied on one another to gain market share against FSC.
The worlds quickest engineer took Tesla to the finish line! Racecar driver Ze'ev Drori was previously an engineer at FSC and the founder of MMI Monolythic Memories. The rubber hit the road in 2007 when Drori became CEO of Tesla Motors and earned the title as the man who turned around Tesla.
One mans head cold froze the entire industry! Unbeknownst to one another, all chip makers used the same diamond-tipped saws to slice ignots into silicon wafers. As it turns out, only one man was producing all of these saws in his garage and in the 70's, he took some sick days off, interupting the entire global chip supply market.
The Mitsubishi logo is nuts! Three chestnuts, to be exact. Mitsu translates to three and bishi translates to water chestnut or rhombus. The logo is three diamond chestnuts.
Sanyo and Matsushita are related by marriage (or their founders are)! The owner of Sanyo got started in his brother in-law\\\'s plant…. Matsushita
A group of competitors came together in a venture to begin the Next eXPerience, and would call this experience the NXP
Back in the days when radios were still Violas, a small company ventured to make a Viola that was compatible with Motor Vehicles. They received the reputation for Motor Viola and would soon after take on the name Motorola.
Gordon and Robert made a fortune selling more noise! Moor Noyce was the original desired name for Intel but after some careful consideration, founders Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce agreed that it might be better to just abbreviate as MN Electronics. Still unsatisfied, they moved to the name Integrated Electronics Corporation and eventually shortened it to INTEL.
At just 30 years old, the legendary Robert Norton Noyce, AKA the \"Mayor of Silicon Valley\", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor and a decade later founded the Intel Corporation