LSI Corporation is an electronics company based in San Jose, California that designs semiconductors and software that accelerate storage and networking in datacenters, mobile networks and client computing.

 

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. Since joining the company Abhi Talwalkar has aligned the companies products, through M&A, divestitures and internal development to address the "data deluge", the massive amount of data created in society. LSI offers products for datacenters, mobile networks and client computing.

 

In 2006, LSI Logic sold the Gresham, Oregon Design & Manufacturing Facility to ON Semiconductor.

 

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.

 

Markets

• LSI designs semiconductors and software that accelerate storage and networking in datacenters, mobile networks and client computing.

 

• The LSI storage product portfolio includes products for hard disk drives and connecting servers to storage. These products help accelerate application performance, and include host bus adapters; SATA+SAS RAID controller cards; SAS switches and ICs; LDPC read channels and preamps for hard disk drives; and PCIe flash adapters, flash storage processors and storage tiering software.

 

LSI Storage Products

• The LSI networking product portfolio embeds intelligence into mobile infrastructure to deliver the right content to the right device at the right time. The product family includes communication processors and accelerator cards, and standard, semi-custom and full-custom semiconductors. 

 

Mergers and acquisitions

• August 1998 - LSI acquired Symbios Logic from Hyundai.

• March 2001 - LSI acquired C-Cube in a stock-for-stock transaction

• September 2001 - LSI acquired AMI's RAID adapter division in a cash transaction.

• September 2002 - LSI acquired Mylex from IBM.

• December 2006 - LSI announced its intention to merge with Agere in an all stock transaction.

• February 2007 - LSI acquired SiliconStor for approximately $55 million in cash.

• April 2, 2007 - LSI completed its merger with Agere Systems.
 

• June 27, 2007 - LSI announced a deal under which Magnum Semiconductor, Inc., a spin-off of Cirrus Logic's Video group, acquires the LSI consumer products business.

• September 5, 2007 - LSI announced plans to Acquire Tarari for $85M in cash

• October 24, 2007 - LSI completed its sale of its Mobility Division to Infineon Technologies AG

• March 10, 2008 - LSI announced an agreement to purchase Infineon's hard disk drive business.

• April 28, 2008 - LSI completed its purchase of Infineon's hard disk drive business.

• April 28, 2009 - LSI bought the 3ware RAID adapter business of Applied Micro Circuits Corporation

• July 22, 2009 - LSI announced an agreement to acquire ONStor, Inc.
 

• March 9, 2011 - LSI announced its sale of its external storage systems business to NetApp, Inc.

• May 9, 2011 - LSI completed its sale of its external storage systems business to NetApp, Inc.

• October 26, 2011 - LSI announced an agreement to acquire flash storage processors maker SandForce for $370 million. 

• January 4, 2012 - LSI completed its acquisition of flash storage processors maker SandForce