National Semiconductor

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National Semiconductor Corporation

Type	Public (NYSE: NSM)
Founded	1959
Headquarters	Santa Clara, California, USA
Key people	Brian L. Halla, Chairman and CEO
Industry	Semiconductors
Products	Semiconductors
Employees	8,500
Website	www.national.com

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, USA,, National Semiconductor is one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers. The company creates high-value analog devices and subsystems. National's leading-edge 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.

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. The Information Appliance Division (highly integrated processors "internet gadgets") was also sold to AMD in 2002. Other business like digital wireless chipsets have also been recently closed down, as National has reincarnated itself as an high performance analog semiconductor company.