LSI Logic - History

History

LSI Corporation was founded under the name LSI Logic in 1981 in Milpitas, CA by Wilfred Corrigan as a semiconductor ASIC company after he left as CEO of Fairchild Semiconductor in 1979. The other three founders were Bill O'Meara (marketing and sales), Rob Walker (engineering) and Mitchell "Mick" Bohn (finance). The firm was initially funded with $6 million from noted venture capitalists including Sequoia Capital. A second round of financing for an additional $16M was completed in March 1982. The firm went public as LSI on Nasdaq on Friday May 13, 1983 - netting $153M, the largest tech IPO up to that date.

LSI built its own wafer fabrication, packaging and testing facilities in Milpitas as well as utilizing excess capacity at Toshiba for manufacturing - an early example of the fabless semiconductor manufacturing model. LSI Logic expanded world wide by establishing stand-alone affiliate companies in Japan, Europe and Canada. Nihon LSI Logic based in Tokyo, Japan was financed in April 1984 through a $20M private offering. LSI Logic Ltd based in Bracknell UK was financed in June 1984 by an additional $20M private placement and LSI Logic Canada based in Calgary, Alberta went public on the Toronto stock exchange. Each affiliate sought to develop independent manufacturing facilities through alliances, purchases or independent development. In 1985, the firm entered into a joint venture with Kawasaki Steel - Japan's third largest steel manufacturer - to build a $100M wafer fabrication plant in Tsukuba, Japan.

The firm developed the industry's first line of ASIC products which let customers create custom 'gate array' chips by use of leading-edge proprietary CAD tools (called LDS for 'Logic Design System'). The initial product lines were based on high-speed Emitter-coupled_logic technology but soon switched over to high-speed CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) which offered much lower cost and lower power requirements to system designers. Over time, LSI Logic increased its product offerings and IP library through pioneering efforts in the areas of standard cells, structured arrays, DSPs and microprocessors (MIPS and SPARC) as it moved toward the complete design and development of "System on a Chip" solutions.

As the ASIC market matured, third party design tools became preeminent and with the very high cost of fab development, the foundry fab model gained momentum and LSI returned in 2005 to a fabless semiconductor business. During its ASIC years, LSI Logic invested in core technologies such as microprocessors, communication devices, and video compression devices such as MPEG. These core technologies have been used together with acquisitions to better place the firm as an intellectual property owner. In 1998 it bought Symbios Logic from Hyundai. In March 2001 LSI acquired C-Cube for $878M in stock. In 2006, the firm celebrated its 25th year of business.

In 2005, Abhi Talwalkar joined the company as President and CEO, and was also appointed to the Board of Directors. Mr. Talwalkar was an executive at Intel Corporation before joining LSI.

On April 2, 2007, LSI completed its merger with Agere Systems, and rebranded the firm from LSI Logic Corporation to LSI Corporation. On May 9, 2011 - LSI completed its sale of its external storage systems business to NetApp, Inc. In 2012, LSI completed the acquisition of SandForce, expanding its offerings for the flash memory market.

Initially listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol LLSI, LSI Logic transferred its listing to the NYSE in October of 1989 where it traded for over 20 years under the ticker symbol LSI. It transferred its listing back to the NASDAQ (Global Select Market) on December 19, 2012, where it currently trades under the same ticker symbol LSI.