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Timeline Summary

In the Year 2008

Sanyo & Panasonic announce that Sanyo would become a subsidiary of Panasonic November 2nd, Sanyo and Panasonic announce they have agreed on the main points of a proposed buyout that would make Sanyo a subsidiary of Panasonic. A formal announcement of the acquisition was made on Sanyo's website on December 19, 2008.

On Semi purchases three new businesses On Semi acquires Analog Devices's CPU Voltage and PC Thermal Monitoring Business for $184M, Catalyst Semi for $115M, and AMI Semiconductors for $915M.

Matsushita consolidates and changes its name to Panasonic Matsushita changes its name to Panasonic. Panasonic, Matsushita, and National were all brand names of the same company and it was time to consolidate. The name change was approved at a shareholders' meeting on June 26th.

Intel founds Numonyx March 31st, Numonyx is founded by Intel Corporation. STMicroelectronics and Francisco Partners and would be acquired by Micron Technology (who would issue millions of shares back to the three) almost exactly 2 yrs later. Hmmmm.

On Semiconductor's acquisition of AMI Semiconductor is completed March 2008, ON Semiconductor completes the acquisition of AMI Semiconductor for $915M.

Altera introduces the first 40-nm programmable logic devices

May 2008, Altera introduced the industry's first 40-nm programmable logic devices: the Stratix IV FPGAs and HardCopy IV ASICs

Atmel purchases Quantum Research Group Ltd In 2008 Atmel purchased Quantum Research Group Ltd. (now known as Atmel Technologies Ireland Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary), a supplier of capacitive sensing technology.[16] Work done at Quantum, led to the 2012 release of Atmel\'s XSense product line, a flexible touch screen based on copper mesh electrodes

Microchip attempts to takeover Atmel with no success October 2008, Atmel received an unsolicited offer from Microchip Technology and ON Semiconductor, estimated at US$2.3 billion.The offer was eventually rejected and the companies gave up on their hostile takeover attempt

Avago goes public In August 2008, the company filed an initial public offering of $400 million

Avago acquires Infineon In October 2008, Avago Technologies acquired Infineon Technologies\' Munich-based bulk acoustic wave business for €21.5 million

Did you know?

When Werner Von Siemens, co-founder of Seimens, summited an egyptian pyramid, he stumbled accross a phenomina and with material in his lunchbox used the static charge to create a Layden jar which began to spark. His Arab guides, assuming whichcraft quickly attempted to seize Seimens companion. Seimen thought quickly and shocked the guide with the charge, throwing him to the ground. The Arab guide quickly fled and Seimen fled the territory to escape the retaliation.
Fairchild Semi was founded by 8 key ex employees of Shockley Semiconductor and about a decade later the pattern repeated as 8 key employees left Fairchild Semi to form competing company AMD.
Hitachi's logo was inspired by Japans imperial rising sun flag. The name Hitachi is actually comprised of the two words hi meaning “sun” and tachi meaning “rise”.
Mostek makes a Mistake. In age when Jobs and Wozniak were founding Apple , one company owned rights to the processors used in both the Apple and the IBM computers. In fact Mostek had secured the rights to every microprocessor family of importance, including the the Zilog Z80, Intel x86, and Mot 68000. However, Mostek did very little to leaverage their position and after years of financial troubles, would eventually be forced to sell out.
Itallian company, Thomson acted quickly purchasing Mostek and immediately opened several lawsuits around their newly acquired intellectual property portfolio. Thomson went on collected over $430 million in royalties. That same year, the semiconductor division of Thomson merged with SGS Microelecttronica to become STMicroelectronics.
Within a two year period, both Intel and AMD were started by small groups of rogue FSC employees who relied on one another to gain market share against FSC.
The worlds quickest engineer took Tesla to the finish line! Racecar driver Ze'ev Drori was previously an engineer at FSC and the founder of MMI Monolythic Memories. The rubber hit the road in 2007 when Drori became CEO of Tesla Motors and earned the title as the man who turned around Tesla.
One mans head cold froze the entire industry! Unbeknownst to one another, all chip makers used the same diamond-tipped saws to slice ignots into silicon wafers. As it turns out, only one man was producing all of these saws in his garage and in the 70's, he took some sick days off, interupting the entire global chip supply market.
The Mitsubishi logo is nuts! Three chestnuts, to be exact. Mitsu translates to three and bishi translates to water chestnut or rhombus. The logo is three diamond chestnuts.
Sanyo and Matsushita are related by marriage (or their founders are)! The owner of Sanyo got started in his brother in-law\\\'s plant…. Matsushita
A group of competitors came together in a venture to begin the Next eXPerience, and would call this experience the NXP
Back in the days when radios were still Violas, a small company ventured to make a Viola that was compatible with Motor Vehicles. They received the reputation for Motor Viola and would soon after take on the name Motorola.
Gordon and Robert made a fortune selling more noise! Moor Noyce was the original desired name for Intel but after some careful consideration, founders Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce agreed that it might be better to just abbreviate as MN Electronics. Still unsatisfied, they moved to the name Integrated Electronics Corporation and eventually shortened it to INTEL.
At just 30 years old, the legendary Robert Norton Noyce, AKA the \"Mayor of Silicon Valley\", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor and a decade later founded the Intel Corporation