Silicon Systems

Company history

Silicon Systems was founded and incorporated in California on May 17, 1972 by Gene B. Potter, Ronald H. Reeder, and William E. Drobish. SSi grew to 146 employees and $10.5 million in revenue in 1980. Its initial public offering was on January 29, 1981. The company became a supplier of integrated circuits (ICs) for computer disk drives, touch-tone receivers, vehicle loop detectors, and other applications from garage door openers to descrambling satellite broadcast signals.

The company was acquired by TDK Corporation in on May 15, 1989 for $200M.

The company grew to an annual revenue of $400 million as of 1996. It owned wafer fabrication plants in Tustin and Santa Cruz, California, an assembly and test facility in Singapore, and design facilities in San Jose and Grass Valley, California. In 1996, Texas Instruments (TI) acquired the storage products portion of SSi in a deal worth $575 million. TDK retained the communications products business as TDK Semiconductor Corporation (TSC).

In 2005, TSC was purchased by Golden Gate Capital Partners and renamed Teridian Semiconductor.

In 2010, Teridian was purchased by Maxim Integrated Products for $315M in cash.

The founders of Silicon Systems came from Scientific Data Systems.

MicroSim Corporation spun off from Silicon Systems in 1984. In 1998 MicroSim was acquired by OrCAD Systems Corporation.

Silicon Systems Inc. had no relation to another and more recent company named SiliconSystems, Inc. which was founded in 2003, made solid-state drives (SSDs), and was eventually acquired by Western Digital.

Designs for integrated circuit houses

Source:

256-bit and 1024-bit ECL RAM for Signetics

bipolar test chip for Scientific Micro systems

Interface Vector Byte (SMS360) for Scientific Micro systems SMS300 microcontroller series which later became the Signetics 8X300

second source Transistor–transistor logic designs for Advanced Micro Devices

8-bit addressable latch 8-bit parallel output shift register synchronous 4-bit up/down counter

8288 bus controller for Intel

Designs for end users, with SSi supplying the completed circuits

digital loop detector for Indicator Controls Corporation

5 chips for Hughes Aircraft Company, Culver City

digital video processor for Hughes Aircraft Company, Canoga Park

S14001A speech synthesis chip for the Speech+ Calculator of Telesensory Systems

video editing time code generator for EECO, Inc. (Electronic Engineering Company of California)

output interface chip for Telesensory Systems Opticon reader for the blind

garage door opener digital transmitter and receiver chips for Linear Corporation

VLA1 and VLA2 correlator chips for Very Large Array of the National Radio Observatory

barricade flasher controller chip for Royal Industries, Inc.

DC011 and DC012 integrated electronics for Digital Equipment Corporation VT100 computer terminal

digital loop detector (second generation) for Detector Systems, Inc.

SC-01 speech synthesis chip implementing vocal tract model for Votrax Division of Federal Screw Works

Designs proprietary to SSi

SSi 101 servo preamplifier for hard disk drives

SSi 104/105 4 channel read/write head interface for hard disk drives

SSi 201 Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling DTMF receiver for telephony

Early employees

Early employees of Silicon Systems included:

Locations

February 1973 to December 1976: 2913 Daimler St., Santa Ana, CA

December 1976 to April 1979: 16692 Hale Ave., Irvine, CA

October 1977 to April 1979: Gary Ave., Irvine, CA - Design Engineering and Personnel

May 1978 to April 1979: 16832 Red Hill Ave., Irvine, CA - Advanced Development

April 1979 onward: 14351 Myford Rd., Tustin, CA