| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Semiconductors |
| Founded | May 1998 |
| Headquarters | Santa Clara, California, USA |
| Key people | Teresa H. Meng, founder and director Craig H. Barratt, President and CEO |
| Products | Network cards |
| Revenue | US$542M (FY 2009)[1] |
| Operating income | US$22.2M (FY 2009)[1] |
| Net income | US$46.4M (FY 2009)[1] |
| Total assets | US$915M (FY 2009)[2] |
| Total equity | US$732M (FY 2009)[2] |
| Employees | 1079[3] |
| Parent | Qualcomm |
| Website | www.qca.qualcomm.com |
Qualcomm Atheros is a developer of semiconductors for network communications, particularly wireless chipsets. Founded under the name Atheros in 1998 by experts in signal processing from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley and the private industry, it became a public company in 2004. The current President and CEO of the company is Craig H. Barratt.
On the 5th January 2011, it was announced that Qualcomm has agreed a takeover of the company for an enterprise valuation of US$3.5 billion. The acquisition was completed on May 24, 2011 and Atheros became a subsidiary of Qualcomm operating under the name Qualcomm Atheros[4].
Atheros chipsets for the IEEE 802.11 standard of wireless networking are used by over 30 different wireless device manufacturers, including Netgear, D-Link and TRENDnet.[5]
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In the free software community, Atheros had been known for not releasing the appropriate documentation that would allow free software developers to write open-source drivers to support Atheros wireless devices without resorting to reverse-engineering[6]. As a result, OSS support for Atheros hardware was rather limited. However, there were some completely free open-source drivers written via reverse-engineering techniques. For example, Reyk Floeter of the OpenBSD project reversed-engineered the HAL-module of the ath driver found on FreeBSD and provided a completely free driver for Atheros devices. Additionally, Nick Kossifidis of the MadWiFi project based on Floeter's work started madwifi-old-openhal branch in February 2006 [7] in order to create a free driver for Linux. Kossifidis performed some further reverse engineering to add support for most ar5k chips and made various code improvements. His code made it to ath5k [8], a driver for Atheros chips that is now included in the Linux kernel.
Atheros has often been featured in OpenBSD's theme songs that relate to the ongoing efforts of freeing non-free devices.[9]
In July 2008 Atheros decided to change policy and hired two key Linux wireless developers Luis Rodriguez and Jouni Malinen and released an open-source Linux driver for their 802.11n devices.[10]. Atheros also released some source from their binary HAL under ISC license to help the community add support for their abg chips. Atheros has been actively contributing towards the ath9k driver in Linux, with support for all current 802.11n chipsets.[11]. Atheros has also been providing documentation and assistance to the FreeBSD community to enable updated support for 802.11n chipsets in FreeBSD-9.0 and FreeBSD-HEAD.[12].
In 2006, Atheros acquired ZyDAS Technology, a USB Wireless LAN company headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan. This core team is now the heart of Atheros' Taiwan Development Center.
In early 2007, Atheros acquired Attansic Technology, a Fast and Gigabit Ethernet chip maker headquartered in Taiwan, adding wireline communications to its product portfolio and expanding its Asia design team.
In late 2007, Atheros acquired u-Nav Microelectronics, a GPS chipmaker headquartered in Irvine, CA.
In late 2009, Atheros acquired Intellon Corporation, a public company.[13] With this acquisition, Atheros enhanced and expanded its networking technology portfolio to include Intellon’s industry-leading power line communication (PLC) solutions for home networking, networked entertainment, broadband-over-powerline (BPL) access, Ethernet-over-Coax (EoC), and smart grid management applications.
In August 2010, Atheros acquired Chinese headquartered Opulan Technology Corp.[14] This acquisition added EPON broadband access technology to Atheros' increasingly diversified portfolio of communications IC technologies and also significantly bolstered Atheros' already strong engineering presence in Shanghai, China.
In January 2011, Qualcomm entered into a Material Definitive Agreement to acquire Atheros at $45 per share in an all in cash merger agreement. This agreement was subject to shareholder approval and other customary regulatory approvals[15].
In May 2011, Qualcomm completed its acquisition of Atheros Communications for a total of US$3.1 billion. Atheros is now a subsidiary of Qualcomm under the name Qualcomm Atheros.