Harris Corp, in the process of selling off its Semiconductor operations to investment firm Sterling Holding LLC (CI No 3,674) is to revive the name Intersil when the unit begins its new life as a separate company early next month. Harris is selling all but 10% of the company to Sterling, a division of Citicorp Venture Capital, for $700m.
Gregory Williams, president of Harris Semiconductor will lead the new company, which will continue the existing semiconductor business of Harris, including analog, mixed-signal, power semiconductor and high reliability radiation-hardened technology. It will focus on the communications, power, and space/defense markets.
The original Intersil was founded as Advanced Memory Systems way back in 1968, became part of General Electric Co’s RCA semiconductor operations, and was eventually acquired by Harris in 1988 as part of GE Solid State. According to Williams, the independent Intersil will be able to focus more effectively on high growth markets. Its products include the Prism WLAN wireless LAN chipset, used by such companies as 3Com Corp, Aironet Wireless Communications Inc, Compaq Computer Corp, Nokia Oy, Nortel Networks Inc and Samsung Electronics Co. Power semiconductor products are used by Pentium class and hot swap file servers and device bay applications.
Intersil will have 6,000 employees worldwide. It will launch a new marketing effort early in August to promote the new name.
