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billp37
Brad Pierce
Do you know of any peer-reviewed studies that support that? How did they define ...
Requiem for an era
Brian Fuller
4/8/2011 4:45 AM EDT
Part of the Silicon Valley died this week when National Semiconductor got bought by Texas Instruments. It was another box checked off on the long slow autopsy of the golden era of semiconductors, an era begun in the 1950s when companies starting supplanting fruit orchards in the Santa Clara Valley; when National fled the East Coast for Santa Clara to be where the action was.
For generations, National invented and grew, and the communities around it benefited when National paid taxes that helped build roads, schools and sewer systems, employed thousands who built communities and nurtured schools and spawned and supported local businesses. Nearby a similar story: Intel, AMD, Linear, and so on down the storied honor roll of Silicon Valley pioneers.
Even as National seemed to peak in the 1990s; even as it wobbled through the Gil Amelio regime (what the heck was that all about??) and tried going toe to toe with Intel (Brian Halla eventually saw the light on the strategic error), the company and its people were always a cornerstone of the Valley.
And they had fun. Bernie Cole writes about faux charges up San Juan Hill; Paul Rako has a fantastic look back at National and Valley history, through the eyes of the late Bob Widlar (two of the outstanding photos in that post tell you exactly what Widlar would think of the merger).
It’s all washing away now in a warm shower of billions of dollars from the Texans. There will be optimistic talk in the coming months about synergy and strengths and mutual dependencies, of scalability and leverage and every other vacuous, meaningless messaging mantra you can conceive of.
The words will fade as hundreds of jobs fall, like cherry blossoms, and 1152 Kifer Road becomes a satellite office rather than a power center. Don’t be surprised in five years if you drive past it and it looks just like Motorola SPS’s old power center on North 56th St. in Phoenix—today, a gleaming… white… and completely empty reminder of a vanished time. There, too, the operations moved south to Texas.
Back to the Valley. Last year, MicroSemi, an aggressively expanding analog house, snapped up Actel, one of the Valley’s FPGA pioneers. Lots of talk about minimal redundancies and so on, but scores of people have lost their jobs and those remaining are being pressured to move south, to Southern California, to the headquarters of the winning team, to the… Not-Silicon Valley.
So, we mourn the dead.
And then we move on.
We move on because, in the distant warm memories of a fading few, families packed picnics and piled into old trucks and station wagons and rattled up Mt. Hamilton or into the Santa Cruz Mountains at springtime to marvel at the impossibly vast vista of blossoming fruit trees carpeting the Valley below.
All gone.
Replaced by vast tangled freeways and thousands of bland buildings stamped out by armies of architects and builders who, long before, abandoned the notion of excelling at their craft.
We move on because what replaced the farms was an economy of unimaginable innovation, wealth, optimism and embrace of creative destruction… an economy of National, Intel, AMD and, later, Xilinx, Altera, Actel, Linear and scores more.
We move on because of the same creative destruction that companies like National feasted on in their youth; we move on because the Valley will always be the cradle of innovation. After the silicon guys came the systems guys; now, the software guys—Google. Facebook. Twitter. They all stand on the shoulders of National Semiconductor and other Silicon Valley pioneers.
Mourn the dead, and raise your glass.
The Valley is dead. Long live the Valley.
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donnie.adams
4/8/2011 2:17 PM EDT
Brian....great story! And Paul, who says engineers don't have a sense of humor. My own story, from National Semiconductor and Silicon Valley.
When I was a kid, Lawrence Expressway was a two-lane road and had a creek beside it.
My first summer job out of high school was at National testing diodes. Most went out at lunch and smoked pot, but I was afraid that one of those diodes would be in some space flight and would fail because I was stoned. Best encouragement to go to college! Ahh 1969, the summer of love!
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tfc
4/8/2011 3:37 PM EDT
Not an end of an era, but the beginning of a new and wondrous error. The big wigs say all you need is two or three competitors in an industry to have a functioning free market. So when we get down to three semi companies, will the remaining "three engineers" come up with the same amount of ideas and inventions as the 100 or so that use to work in the field. I foresee greater profits due to higher prices, higher barrier costs to enter the simi market, and less innovation. what a great trade off.
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ManasK.RayChaudhuri
4/16/2011 10:33 PM EDT
In any case,yhe advent of Texas Instruments is welcome.
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TOEKNEE
4/8/2011 6:07 PM EDT
@uyiyuiyu
This is supposed to be an Electronic Engineers forum....I don't think advertising an online sales company is what it is for, or am I missing something?
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David Ashton
4/8/2011 9:27 PM EDT
What you're missing is that these guys are just a pain in the ass!! If they want volunteers to delete them off the sub's list, I'll put my hand up. (but they'll just create a new ID and do it again). Maybe you should get your cutlass out, Toeknee....
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Frank Eory
4/8/2011 6:35 PM EDT
Nice nostalgic piece Brian, and I also really enjoyed Paul Rako's article and still more Bob Widlar stories that I had not previously heard.
Regarding the empty shell of the former Motorola SPS 56th Street facility in Phoenix -- I've got a better one for you: the former Motorola SPS Broadway facility in Mesa, which was torn down several years ago and new buildings and new corporate tenants are now in its place. Looking at it now, it's hard to believe there was once a semiconductor fab there...gone without a trace.
But the semiconductor industry here survived the breakup and downsizing of Motorola SPS into ON and Freescale, and of course there will still be plenty of semiconductor industry -- and hopefully most of the existing jobs -- in Silicon Valley after the dust settles on TI's acquisition of National.
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David Ashton
4/8/2011 9:39 PM EDT
The first data books I bought with my own money (as opposed to hand me downs) were the 1980 NS Linear Databook and Linear Apps Handbook. I bought them in London, and coming from the databook desert of Zimbabwe, they were like gold. I still have them and they are well thumbed. National had some great ICs in those days.
For all the bleating about creating a bigger stronger company, complementary product lines, etc, I think something is going to be lost here....
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Sheetal.Pandey
4/11/2011 8:50 AM EDT
Very nicely written article. I am not very surprised. From some time it was evident that National is trying really hard to maintain the market, it was evident that some big giant will buy it. But I feel sorry because the brand National Semi had been there for long.
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ManasK.RayChaudhuri
4/16/2011 10:36 PM EDT
Brand name will have a larger impact with TEXAS INSTRUMENTS
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Brian Fuller2
4/11/2011 12:36 PM EDT
Hello everyone: apologies for the spam-roaches. The dev team is working on this and we've deleted the users.
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Brian Fuller2
4/11/2011 12:46 PM EDT
Update: in our last platform sprint, we changed things to allow for more sophisticated commenting (i.e. commenting on comments). So the newer database configuration now has to be altered to look for the original spam flags we had instituted.
We're Q/Aing the fix shortly and will hopefully launch live by EOD (4/11). Stay tuned and thanks for your patience.
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KB3001
4/12/2011 6:56 AM EDT
Nice article Brian. The Valley keeps re-inventing itself indeed.
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peralta_mike
4/12/2011 10:18 AM EDT
The Texan Borg:
You will be assimilated.
Resistance is futile.
(Unless it's part of a circuit.
Then WE will buy you out. hehe.)
WE will add your distinctiveness
to our own as we force you into
THE COLLECTIVE!
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seaEE
4/12/2011 9:08 PM EDT
National's early databooks, such as their CMOS 4000 logic databook had a wealth of information in them on topics like ESD sensitivity and latchup. The level of expertise displayed really gave you confidence in their product. I also enjoyed reading Bob Pease's columns.
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agk
4/13/2011 5:02 AM EDT
One BIG buying another BIG. Two BIGS join together making another BIGBIG.AS TI mentioned the products of NS will remian there and will continue. Probably soon in near future new familiy of mixed signal devices will be in the market. LMTI----or TILM----series
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Gil Russell
4/13/2011 9:27 AM EDT
Hi Brian,
Nice story about National Semiconcious.
It never could figure out what it wanted to be if and when it ever grew up. That problem's now solved.
I guess this is what happens to a company that glows orange from Central Expressway...,
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Brian Fuller2
4/13/2011 12:26 PM EDT
Gil, no offense to our friends at National, but that's a hilarious nickname!
It has to be a challenge, though, in the analog business to do something different. Consider:
+Brian Halla tried to compete with Intel for a while with his thin-client application strategy. Boom!
+ Analog Devices edged more into the digital / DSP realm. Boom!
+ TI (microprocessors, DSPs) Boom! (Though not quite so loud).
It's an industry segment with loooonnggg product lifetimes being bought by people with loonnggg memories. For an analog company to try to break out of that mold and sell something new (no matter how innovative it must be), is difficult. It's like Detroit trying to do fuel-efficient cars.
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ErinM
4/13/2011 1:43 PM EDT
Thanks for the great post that emphasizes the many, many contributions National has made to the Silicon Valley. But National's fate does not mean analog is not gone from Silicon Valley! According to the latest Databeans rankings, a Silicon Valley native is the fifth biggest analog company in the world (http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4214478/TI-lengthens-lead-in-analog-IC-rankings). And they aren't stopping there. Maxim grew 45% year on year according to Databeans, while the top four companies (TI, STM, Infineon, and ADI) only averaged 32% growth. Long live Silicon Valley!
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Robert.Russell
4/13/2011 5:00 PM EDT
What about Shockley Semiconductor, or, more importantly, Fairchild Semi who were there and made the valley long before National?
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RWatkins
4/14/2011 10:32 AM EDT
All of these comments and no mention of what most of us "old timers" are worried about. We hope that TI purchased National to get a better grip on the market, not to eliminate its competitor. We have seen TI purchase other entities and create nightmares for designers. Two good examples are TI's Burr-Brown and Luminary purchases. In each case, products were assimilated poorly and details were lost in release of new products that drove designers away from TI when stuff that had historically been high quality did not work, did not perform per data sheet, or worse experienced early failure due to chip design issues not resolved prior to release. I personally felt this pain designing in a Burr Brown ADC (first problem EVER using Burr Brown product) and a Luminary processor (separate projects). Let us all pray to the TI bean-counter gods that they will not lay off critical engineering staff that had kept National product releases and quality exceptional, and they will not force premature release of products that were in the pipeline at time of purchase.
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Neil.Albaugh
4/14/2011 8:11 PM EDT
If you want to invision the fate of National, just look at what happened to Burr-Brown. TI paid $7.6 BILLION for BB and what's left of it now?
Neil
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Brian Fuller2
4/14/2011 2:53 PM EDT
RWatkins, you make a fantastic point. Something like 75 % of all mergers fail. (And I'd love to see data that slices the results by size of merger)...
As journalists, we should probably start every merger story by writing "Three quarters of all mergers fail. Why is this any different?"
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Brad Pierce
4/25/2011 7:10 PM EDT
Do you know of any peer-reviewed studies that support that? How did they define success?
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David Ashton
4/15/2011 6:55 AM EDT
I've ALWAYS had problems trying to find data on any product made by a company that was later absorbed by another company. Almost certainly the same will happen to NS. I'll be hanging on to my 1980 data books....
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jcdrisc
4/21/2011 9:21 PM EDT
National's databooks and appnotes were always excellent. For authoritative comment see all input on web from Bob Pease and Paul Rako, both ex-NSC employees. The best linear appnotes in the business are by Bob Pease and Jim Williams (LT).
TI will just delete useful NSC parts and the creative electronics industry will be the WORSE for it. DAMN !!!!
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jcdrisc
4/21/2011 9:30 PM EDT
AND since I am MAD about this I would add, try to find a simple part now like a 3046 transistor array.......??
The industry is now MARKET driven which means if the Chinese robots are not chomping about a million of a line item a month the fat cats in TI marketing will probably delete it......!!!
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billp37
5/11/2011 10:56 PM EDT
From: bpayne37@comcast.net
To: "brian fuller"
Cc: "junko yoshida" Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 8:50:21 PM
Subject: requiem for an era
Hello Mr Fuller,
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/pop-blog/4214882/Requiem-for-an-era
I spent most of WWII in the SF area.
Fort Berry, the Presidio and Berika Street.
My mother and I visited the carrier Franklin on its return to SF.
I was a student at Commodore Sloat school in SF for about first and second grade.
We moved to San Mateo in about 1947.
I was a student at Beresford grade school in south san mateo.
Diane Varsi was a classmate.
Then Borel middle school. I was there for the days of '49.
I attended San Mateo high school.
Enviromental damage done by silicon valley and the freeway system was great.
Electronic Engineering Times, January 22, 1996, p. 84.
Regards,
bill
http://www.prosefights.org/pnmratehearing/pnmratehearing.htm#glick
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