LSI Corporation

1981-2004

In 1981, Wilfred Corrigan, Bill O'Meara, Rob Walker and Mitchell "Mick" Bohn founded LSI under the name LSI Logic in Milpitas, California. Wilfred Corrigan served as the CEO from 1981 until 2005. LSI initially was funded by venture capitalists, including Sequoia Capital with $6 million. In March 1982, a second round of financing brought in another $16 million. LSI Logic went public with Nasdaq as LSI in May 1983 with the largest IPO to date of $153 million.

In 1985, the firm entered into a joint venture with Kawasaki Steel—Japan's third largest steel manufacturer—to build a $100 million wafer fabrication plant in Tsukuba, Japan.

In 1987, SEMATECH (Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology) was incorporated partially in result of the 1984 National Cooperative Research Act, which reduced potential antitrust liabilities of research joint ventures. SEMATECH is a research and development consortium to advance semiconductor and chip manufacturing. LSI Logic was among the 14 founding members, but withdrew from SEMATECH in January 1992.

In July 1991, LSI entered into an agreement with Sanyo Electric of Japan to make a set of chips that translate an HDTV signal into a television image.

LSI Logic started developing its CoreWare technology in 1992. In 1993, Sony Computer Entertainment chose LSI Logic as their ASIC partner, charged with fitting the PlayStation CPU on a single chip. LSI’s CoreWare could do it, while other offers made to Sony needed two chips. Sony also worked with LSI’s engineers develop the graphics engine, DMA controller, I/O and bus controllers.

In 1995, LSI Logic acquired the remaining shares its Canadian subsidiary held, which amounted to 45%. In 1997, Mint Technology, an engineering services company, was acquired by LSI. In August 1998 it bought Symbios Logic from Hyundai Electronic for $760 million cash. In February 1999, LSI acquired Seeq Technology, adding physical-layer based Ethernet technology to LSI’s product line. In May 2000, LSI acquired IntraServer for $70 million, with expectations to add their rapidly expanding customer base to LSI’s own.

In November 2000, LSI acquired Syntax Systems, and in August 2001 the groups merged to become LSI Logic Storage Systems, and later Engenio Information Technologies. In March 2001 LSI acquired C-Cube for $878 million in stock. In that same quarter, LSI introduced Gflx, a flexible process technology. In September 2001 LSI acquired a RAID adapter division from American Megatrends in a $221 million cash transaction. Included in this deal, LSI received AMI’s MegaRAID software intellectual property, host bus adapter products and 200 RAID employees.

LSI and Storage Technology Corporation (StorageTek) entered an alliance making StorageTek the distributor of their co-branded storage products in January 2002. In August 2002 LSI acquired Mylex from IBM, to expand its storage technologies.

In November 2003, LSI sold its Tsukuba, Japan facility to ROHM Company, Ltd.

The Engenio division of LSI filed for its own IPO in 2004, but withdrew citing adverse market conditions after the burst of the dot-com bubble.

2005 to present

In 2005, Abhi Talwalkar joined the company as president and CEO, and was also appointed to the board of directors. Talwalkar was an executive at Intel Corporation before joining LSI, and began a program of acquisitions and divestitures.

In October 2005, LSI Logic opened a semiconductor design and engineering development center at the Dubai Silicon Oasis (DSO) Microelectronics Innovation Center.

In 2006, LSI Logic sold the Gresham, Oregon design and manufacturing facility to ON Semiconductor. In October of that same year it agreed to an all-stock merger with Agere Systems worth about $4 billion. In March 2007, LSI acquired SiliconStor Inc., a provider of semiconductor solutions for enterprise storage networks, for approximately $55 million in cash. In April 2007, LSI completed its merger with Agere Systems Inc., who previously owned LSI’s Mobility Products Group, and rebranded the firm LSI Corporation. Magnum Semiconductor Inc. a spin-off of Cirrus Logic Inc., acquired LSI’s consumer products business and 13 percent of LSI’s workforce in July 2007. These lines included architectures named DoMiNo and Zevio, evolutions of the C-Cube Microsystems technology. August 2007, LSI signed an agreement with STATS ChipPAC Ltd to sell its Pathumthani, Thailand semiconductor assembly and test operations for $100 million. In October 2007, LSI acquired Tarari, a maker of silicon and software, for $85 million in cash. Tarari’s products integrated into LSI’s NSPG organization. In October 2007 LSI completed its sale of its Mobility Division to Infineon Technologies AG (Munich) for $450 million in cash. Approximately 700 LSI employees transferred to Infineon in the deal.

In July 2009, LSI agreed to acquire ONStor, Inc. for $25 million. LSI put ONStor into its Engenio storage division, which is a NAS vendor. LSI bought the 3ware RAID adapter business of Applied Micro Circuits Corporation in April that same year.

In March 2011, LSI announced its sale of its Engenio external storage systems business to NetApp for $480 million in cash. The sale of the Engenio division, which generated revenues of $705 million in 2010, completed in May.

In January 2012, LSI completed the acquisition of SandForce, which produced flash memory controllers (for $370 million reported in October 2011). LSI started producing its own PCIe cards for data center servers, using SandForce’s flash controller chips, under their new Nytro product line that April. This included three different products: LSI Nytro WarpDrive Application Acceleration Cards, LSI Nytro XD Application Acceleration Storage Solution, and LSI Nytro MegaRAID Application Acceleration Cards. LSI also introduced its Nytro Predictor software, a tool that helps determine which Nytro product works best with which applications. At the SCSI Trade Association Technology Showcase in May 2012, LSI announced accelerated datacenter performance with its DataBolt bandwidth optimizer technology. The new DataBolt technology is being introduced to a line of products including the Mini SAS HD connector.

LSI hosted its sixth Accelerated Innovation Summit (AIS), in November 2013.

Milpitas-based LSI Corp. was named a Thomson Reuters 2011 and 2013 Top 100 Global Innovator.

On December 16, 2013, Avago Technologies (which later merged with Broadcom) announced it would be acquiring LSI Corporation for $6.6 billion in cash. The transaction closed on May 6, 2014.