| Type | Public NASDAQ: ISIL |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1967, 1999 |
| Headquarters | Milpitas, California (Silicon Valley) |
| Key people | Dave Bell, CEO |
| Products | Semiconductors |
| Employees | 1800+[1] |
| Website | www.intersil.com |
Intersil Corporation (NASDAQ: ISIL) is an American company that specializes in the design, development and manufacturing of high-performance analog semiconductors for four high-growth markets — Communications, Computing, High End Consumer and Industrial.
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Intersil’s roots were planted with Radiation Incorporated in 1950, General Electric Solid State in 1954 and RCA Solid State in 1956 and Intersil, Inc in 1967. Those companies eventually came together as Harris Semiconductor in 1988. Harris spun off its entire semiconductor division in 1999 and Intersil was re-born with the largest IPO in American semiconductor industry history.[2] Intersil has focused on growth and opportunities in the “pure-play,” high-performance analog semiconductor market.
Intersil's discrete power business was purchased for $338M in 2001 by Fairchild Semiconductor,[3] leaving Intersil to focus on its other businesses.
In February 2008, Richard M. Beyer resigned as CEO to pursue another opportunity[4] and was succeeded by Dave Bell, who soon after restructured the company from five divisions to two.[5]
Intersil acquired fabless semiconductor company Techwell for US$370 million on March 22, 2010.[6]
Some of the many end applications in which Intersil analog ICs can be found include desktop and notebook PCs, cell phones, portable media players and other handheld devices, video distribution systems, video displays, medical equipment, military and space electronics, and industrial systems. Intersil has 47 product families whose products include amplifiers, analog front ends, communication interfaces, data converters, digital potentiometers, display solutions, DSL solutions, optical storage products, power management products, power sequencers, real time clocks, battery management ICs, switches/MUX's, VoIP products and harsh environment ICs for mining, military, space and radiation hardened applications.
A creation of Intersil (as Harris Semiconductor) is the PRISM line of Wi-Fi hardware: that group of products was sold to GlobespanVirata in 2003, and is currently maintained by Conexant. Intersil is the present manufacturer of the RCA (CDP)1802 microprocessor (aka RCA COSMAC), a CPU traditionally much used in space applications.