Integrated Device Technology
Encyclopedia
Integrated Device Technology, Inc. is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in San Jose, California
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...

, that designs, manufactures, and markets low-power, high-performance mixed-signal semiconductor solutions for the advanced communications, computing, and consumer industries. The company markets its products primarily to original equipment manufacturer
Original Equipment Manufacturer
An original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, manufactures products or components that are purchased by a company and retailed under that purchasing company's brand name. OEM refers to the company that originally manufactured the product. When referring to automotive parts, OEM designates a...

s (OEMs). Originally founded in 1980, the company began its story as a provider of Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductors (CMOS)
CMOS
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor is a technology for constructing integrated circuits. CMOS technology is used in microprocessors, microcontrollers, static RAM, and other digital logic circuits...

 for the Communications business segment and Computing business segments. The company today is divided into three separate business segments: a Communication segment, Computing segment, and Consumer segment.

Business segments

The Communications segment offers communication clocks, serial RapidIO
RapidIO
The RapidIO architecture is a high-performance packet-switched, interconnect technology for interconnecting chips on a circuit board, and also circuit boards to each other using a backplane...

 solutions for wireless base station infrastructure applications, radio frequency products, digital logic products, first-in and first-out (FIFO) memories, integrated communications processors, static random-access memory(SRAM) products, and telecommunications semiconductor products. This segment markets its products to the enterprise, data center, and wireless markets.

The Computing segment provides timing products, PCI Express
PCI Express
PCI Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards...

 switching and bridging solutions, high-performance server memory interfaces, multi-port products, signal integrity
Signal integrity
Signal integrity or SI is a set of measures of the quality of an electrical signal. In digital electronics, a stream of binary values is represented by a voltage waveform. However, digital signals are fundamentally analog in nature, and all signals are subject to effects such as noise,...

 products, and PC audio and video products. This segment’s computing products are designed for desktop, notebook, sub-notebook, storage, and server applications.

The Consumer segment provides products for digital TVs, smartphone
Smartphone
A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

s, and gaming consoles through touch controllers, timing products, multi-port memory, audio, and power management devices.

History

IDT’s first product was an industry’s first low-power, high-speed CMOS-based 6116 SRAM device, released in 1981, followed by the first CMOS FIFO
FIFO
FIFO is an acronym for First In, First Out, an abstraction related to ways of organizing and manipulation of data relative to time and prioritization...

 introduced in 1982. Subsequent achievements include the market's first dual-port memory, pioneering in embedded RISC processors, numerous firsts in the timing market, leadership in network search engines and the first flow-control management device.

In 1993, IDT entered the PC clock market with a family of devices (CV104, CV105, CV107, and CV109) focusing on desktop computer platforms. IDT planned to expand its market by producing a suite of PC clock devices that serve next-generation notebook and desktop computing platforms.

In the early 2000’s IDT introduced its first integrated microprocessor, the RC32334. The RC32334 was the first in the family of integrated processors targeted to communication applications. Then a year later IDT introduced an industry’s first network search engine.

In 2003, IDT announced its entry into the PC clock market. The company shifted its initial PC clock family to products serving current-generation desktop, notebook, and server platforms.

In 2004, IDT continued to expand its business by acquiring ZettaCom and Internet Machines Corporation, allowing IDT to enter the serial switching industry. Rather than continue to evolve ZettaCom's full line of existing physical-layer switching and traffic management chips, IDT converted ZettaCom's operation into a new serial switching division. With the acquisition of Internet Machines, IDT was able to accelerate its entry into the standards-based serial-switching market with the addition of PCI Express
PCI Express
PCI Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards...

 technology licensed from Internet Machines.

By the mid 2000’s IDT had developed a single-chip clocking device for Intel® Centrino™ for the notebook PC, jitter attenuator for PCI Express applications, PCI Express interconnect to manage all communications in high density blade systems.

In July of 2009, IDT and Micron Technology
Micron Technology
Micron Technology, Inc. is an American multinational corporation based in Boise, Idaho, USA, best known for producing many forms of semiconductor devices. This includes DRAM, SDRAM, flash memory, SSD and CMOS image sensing chips. Consumers may be more familiar with its consumer brand Crucial...

 entered an alliance to develop PCI Express Solid-State Drive
SSD
-Computing:* Solid-state drive, a type of data storage device which uses memory rather than rotating media* Seven-segment display, a display which uses 7 segments to display mostly numbers* System sequence diagram, a type of UML software engineering diagram...

 technologies for the server, storage and embedded markets. During this alliance, IDT and Micron co-developed enterprise flash controllers with PCIe host interface optimized for Micron’s flash devices and future generation RealSSD™ solid-state drives.
Currently IDT provides for analog and USB switches, audio solutions, clock/timing devices, digital logic products, display/video solutions, FIFO solutions, memory interface products, multi-port memory/dual-port RAM, PCI Express solutions, power management, RF solutions, SRAMs, Serial RapidIO solutions, signal integrity, telecommunications ICS, temperature sensors, and touch products.

Mergers and Acquisitions

In 2001, IDT acquired Newave Inc., a Chinese semiconductor firm, to accelerate its investment in the growing Asian semiconductor industry and telecommunications market. Newave became a subsidiary of IDT through a cash-for-stock merger.

In April, 2004, IDT acquired ZettaCom, a serial switching and bridging semiconductor company, for $35 million. This enabled IDT to be one of the few communications IC suppliers to participate in the standards-based Advance Switching initiative spearheaded by Intel.

IDT made two acquisitions in the year of 2005. In June, IDT acquired Integrated Circuit Systems (ICS) for about $1.7 billion in cash and stock. The acquisition provided a platform for growth within the communications, computing, and consumer market. In October, IDT acquired Freescale Semiconductor's
Freescale Semiconductor
Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. is a producer and designer of embedded hardware, with 17 billion semiconductor chips in use around the world. The company focuses on the automotive, consumer, industrial and networking markets with its product portfolio including microprocessors, microcontrollers,...

 timing solutions business for $35 million. The transaction was originally initiated by Integrated Circuit System Inc. before it was acquired by IDT earlier that year.

In July, 2006, IDT acquired the PC Audio division of Austin-based company SigmaTel
SigmaTel
SigmaTel is an electronics company located in Austin, TX, which designs mixed audio signal processors, and controller chips for multifunction peripherals. SigmaTel was Austin's largest IPO as of 2003 when it became publicly traded on NASDAQ...

 for $80 million. This including the design, marketing and manufacturing rights, and software products. IDT planned to maintain the production flow of the existing SigmaTel products as part of the purchase agreement.

In October, 2008, IDT purchased the video processing technology and related assets from Silicon Optix
Silicon Optix
Silicon Optix Inc was a privately held fabless semiconductor company that designed and manufactured video/image digital processing integrated circuits. Originally a division of Genesis Microchip, Silicon Optix was spun off in 2001 by Paul Russo, the CEO of Genesis Microchip at the time...

, including the Hollywood Quality Video (HQV) brand and the Reon product line. This transaction included members of the Silicon Optix HQV engineering teams to enable continued delivery of video processing solutions.

In April, 2009, IDT sold its network search engine business to NetLogic Microsystems, Inc
NetLogic Microsystems
NetLogic Microsystems, Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company that sells networking processors and integrated circuits.On September 12, 2011, Broadcom announced it would acquire NetLogic for $3.7 billion ....

  for approximately $100 million.

In the month of June, 2009, IDT acquired the touch sensor technology assets and employees of Leadis Technology necessary to execute the existing roadmap. That same month, IDT acquired Tundra Semiconductor for about CDN $120.8 million to expand IDT’s serial switching bridging products through PCI Express, Rapid IO, and VME interconnect standards.

In 2010, IDT made two acquisitions. In January, IDT acquired Mobius Microsystems Inc., a developer of all-silicon oscillator technology. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. In late April of that year, IDT acquired the assets of IKOR, a former subsidiary of iWatt Corporation that manufactures power module VRM solutions for high-performance computing. The all-cash transaction allowed IDT to produce high-performance power management solutions for enterprise computing.

In September, 2011, IDT and Qualcomm
Qualcomm
Qualcomm is an American global telecommunication corporation that designs, manufactures and markets digital wireless telecommunications products and services based on its code division multiple access technology and other technologies. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, USA...

announced the signing an agreement to transfer IDT’s Hollywood Quality Video (HQV) and Frame Rate Conversion (FRC) Video Processing product lines and certain related assets to Qualcomm. As part of the agreement, both companies will be exploring options to include more of IDT’s products in Qualcomm’s reference designs.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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