Citing market price erosion and a refocussing on its core Ethernet business, National Semiconductor Corp has decided to abandon production of its Tropic Token Ring chip set. The company has informed its customers that it is taking end-of-life orders until April, and that it is planning to cease production entirely by the end of July. The company’s production of the chip sets stems back to February 1992 when IBM Corp attempted to broaden the appeal of Token Ring by licensing the company with its single-chip technology. This was billed as the first step in a wider-ranging project between the two companies to develop technologies that would enable users to implement mixed Token Ring and Ethernet networks: NatSemi has also now pulled out of this development work and says it has no plans to launch mixed Token Ring-Ethernet products. According to the San Jose company, relations between it and IBM are still good; while Tropic has provided the company with very healthy business over the last few years, price erosion in the Token Ring market, and a business decision to concentrate on Ethernet – seen as the core business area for the company – led to the decision. Speaking for IBM, worldwide director of OEM sales and marketing Bill Maxwell said that, as Tropic chip prices had collapsed, there was not enough profit in the market to maintain multi-tier distribution, and that IBM would be filling the space left by NatSemi and welcomed the move. As to the Token Ring-Ethernet development work, he said that IBM will look for other partners.
