1981–2004 LSI Logic Corporation was incorporated in November 1980 by
Wilfred J. Corrigan and began operating in early 1981 using leased facilities in Santa Clara, California. The name "LSI" referred to
Large Scale Integration. Corrigan recruited co-founders Bill O'Meara (VP Marketing and Sales), Rob Walker (VP Engineering) and Mitchell "Mick" Bohn (CFO). Initial funding of $6 million came from a consortium of venture capitalists, including
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers II,
Institutional Venture Partners, and Technical Development Capital Ltd. A second round of $16 million in funding from
Sequoia Capital, The first interactive CAD system was called LSI Design System (LDS). The initial EDA flow was based on simulation from TEGAS and place and route from Silvar-Lisco, integrated on Megatek hardware. What made them unique from other ASIC vendors at the time was that they willing to ship the software to their customers rather than keeping it in-house, which was the strategy used by market leaders at the time. In 1982 they started development of their own in-house CAD tools and moved to
Silicon Graphics hardware. By 1988, the EDA industry had developed enough that customers wanted to be able to use 3rd party tools. In 1987, LSI Logic was among the 14 founding members of
SEMATECH, but later withdrew from the organization in January 1992. In December 1987, LSI Logic licensed from
MIPS Computer Systems the rights to manufacture the
R2000 and
R3000 processors, and the right to implement the
MIPS I instruction set architecture (ISA) in their own ASIC designs. In March 1988, LSI Logic agrees to manufacture and sell the
SPARC RISC microprocessor under license from
SUN Microsystems. In October 1988, LSI Logic acquired a controlling stake in
Video Seven Inc., a designer, manufacturer, and marketer of PC graphics boards In April 1989, LSI Logic merged its G-2 Inc PC chipsets and Video Seven Inc. graphics chip buses to create Headland Technology Inc, a subsidiary to be run by LSI Logic founder Bill O'Meara In October 1989, LSI Logic transferred its stock listing from
NASDAQ: LLSI to
NYSE: LSI. In July 1991, LSI Logic entered into an agreement with
Sanyo Electric of Japan to make a set of chips that translate an
HDTV signal into a television image. In July 1992, LSI Logic announced CoreWare subsystems as part of its ASIC design flow . 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. In 1997, LSI Logic acquired Mint Technology, an engineering services company. In February 1999, LSI Logic acquired Seeq Technology for $106 million in stock, adding physical-layer based
Ethernet technology to LSI's product line. In January 2000, LSI Logic established a $50M venture fund to invest in startups in the communication sector. In May 2000, LSI Logic acquired IntraServer for $70 million, with expectations to add their rapidly expanding customer base to LSI's own.
host adapter In November 2000, LSI Logic 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 Logic acquired
C-Cube Microsystems, a video compression semiconductor company, for $878 million in stock. In September 2001 LSI Logic acquired the
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. In August 2002 LSI Logic acquired
Mylex from
IBM, to expand its storage technologies. In November 2003, LSI Logic sold its Tsukuba, Japan wafer fabrication facility to
ROHM Company, Ltd. for $23.5 million. The Engenio division of LSI Logic filed for its own IPO in 2004, but withdrew citing adverse market conditions after the burst of the
dot-com bubble. Talwalkar was an executive at
Intel Corporation before joining LSI. Wilfred Corrigan served as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board from 1981 to June 2005 and Chairman from June 2005 until May 2006. In April 2006, LSI Logic sold the
Gresham, Oregon design and manufacturing facility to
ON Semiconductor for $105 million in cash In October 2006, LSI Logic agreed to an all-stock merger with
Agere Systems worth about $4 billion. In March 2007, LSI Logic acquired SiliconStor Inc., a provider of semiconductor solutions for enterprise storage networks, for approximately $55 million in cash. In April 2007, LSI Logic completed its merger with Agere Systems Inc., who previously owned LSI's Mobility Products Group, and rebranded the firm LSI Corporation. In August 2007, LSI Corporation signed an agreement with STATS ChipPAC Ltd to sell its Pathumthani, Thailand semiconductor assembly and test operations for $100 million. In October 2007, LSI Corporation acquired
Tarari, a maker of silicon and software, for $85 million in cash. That month, LSI Corporation completed its sale of its Mobility Division to
Infineon Technologies AG (Munich) for €330 million in cash. Approximately 700 LSI employees transferred to Infineon in the deal. In April 2009, LSI Corporation bought the
3ware RAID adapter business of
Applied Micro Circuits Corporation. In July 2009, LSI Corporation acquires
NAS vendor ONStor, Inc. for $25 million. In March 2011, LSI Corporation 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. 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. In December 2012, LSI Corporation transferred its stock listing from NYSE: LSI to NASDAQ (Global Select Market): LSI. On December 16, 2013,
Avago Technologies (which later acquired
Broadcom Corporation, then renamed itself as Broadcom Ltd., then in 2018 changed its name to
Broadcom Inc.) announced it would be acquiring LSI Corporation for $6.6 billion in cash. The transaction closed on May 6, 2014. ==References==