National Semiconductor Corp, now shot of National Advanced Systems, has created three independent business groups within its new VLSI Division: the Integrated Systems Group is made up of six independent business centres, each with full responsibility for defining, designing, producing and marketing chips for a key vertical market, the initial six being Local Area Networks, Advanced Communications, Mass Storage, Telecommunications, PC Peripherals, and Imaging & Graphics, and others will be added; the Embedded Control Group combines the company’s standard microprocessors, including the 32-bit Series 32000, and the 16 bit HPC and the 4- and 8-bit COP families of microcomptrollers NatSemi has pretty much given up looking for CPU design wins for the NS32000s; and the Interface & Peripherals Group takes in standard chips including real-time clocks and memory controllers.
