Mixed signals? Yes and no: Analog Devices snaps up rival Maxim Integrated for $20.9bn Analog Devices has confirmed an intent to buy rival Maxim Integrated, saying it'll fork out a whopping $20.9bn in an all-stock deal. The merger was first mooted about half a decade ago when Maxim was valued at slightly under $10bn. Today's share-based offer is roughly $4bn higher than Maxim's market capitalisation. Analog …
Every time chip makers consolidate, another batch of old data sheets disappears. Sure you can sometimes find poorly scanned copies out there, but for those of us who deal with legacy electronics, mergers are a pain. Here's hoping that AD holds on to the support docs and keeps them available.
This will either be good, or bad.
I'm sadly looking towards bad, given the constant consolidation of companies over my lifetime, and the "Why keep this fab process running for three dozen parts that only four major customers rely on?" mentality that seems to be going around lately.
I remember Motorola turning into Freescale, all the old Moto MCU/CPU tech, very interesting power electronics, displays, optoelectronics, and whatnot.
Signetics made the 555, was eventually bought out by Philips (before my time), and then Philips spun out NXP.
Then NXP merged with Freescale, and the product offerings shrank down again, and nearly all of the interesting stuff went "poof".
TI bought National Semiconductor, and a lot of their very interesting bespoke products also went up in the magic smoke.
When Dallas was scooped up by Maxim, they kept most of the product lines alive, and did great things with 1-wire and the acquired IP through the years. They rarely killed a product, that I can tell.
ADI bought Linear Technology, and now Maxim.
My only gripe with Maxim is their stuff has almost always been eye-wateringly high priced, in single or quantity, compared to others. But if you need whatever bespoke little thing they make, they have it, and usually with really long term availability and clearly defined sun-setting dates.
The Atmel/Microchip Technology merger was an interesting one too... lots of pruning done there.
International Rectifier bought by Infineon Technologies.
Ramtron bought by Cypress Semiconductor.
Now Cypress Semiconductor has been gulped up by Infineon.
I feel old.
A beer to memories of a past life.
From what I've heard, the original TI-99/4 was hugely expensive when it first came out, and the cost only came down latterly (by a *huge* amount) in the face of Jack Tramiel and Commodore's price war, which drove TI out of the market shortly after, as the 99/4A's design meant they couldn't afford to sell it at a comparable price to the Vic-20 and still make money:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_TI-99/4A
From what I've read, it was potentially powerful, but massively hobbled by some fundamental design flaws.
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