SiliconBeat

For those of you who think of the semiconductor business as a young tech industry, consider this sobering fact:

Santa Clara-based National Semiconductor today announced it is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

That’s half a century, for those of you who, like many of us at SiliconBeat, flunked basic math.

The company, which was founded in 1959, notes that it developed the first integrated voltage regulator, the first modern operational amplifier and the first 32-bit microprocessor, among other things.

National has been hammered recently by the recession. But it still posted sales of nearly $2 billion for fiscal 2008. And as it expands into the green-energy business, who’s willing to bet it won’t be around for another 50 years?

National Semiconductor, the Santa Clara chip-maker that sees growth potential in quality-of-life products that improve health care and encourage greener energy, said Thursday it had acquired Act Solar.

National Semi has a technology it calls Solar Magic. It improves the efficiency of solar panels that lose power when they’re shaded, covered with debris or get old. It goes into production later this year.

Act Solar, also based in Santa Clara, sells something called PowerString, which also improves solar efficiency by 6 to 11 percent by re-circulating small amounts of energy. Cumulatively, the company said, its technology will result in solar panels that produce 40-80% more energy over their 20-40 year lifespan.

In February, it announced a deal to sell 8 megawatts worth of PowerString to Pacific Power Management, a solar company that engineers and installs solar arrays.

“With Act Solar we can further improve the performance and efficiency of solar systems, at the same time providing monitoring capabilities not available before,” Mike Polacek, National Semi’s senior VP of key market segments, said in a statement.

No financial terms of the all-cash deal were announced. Act Solar is privately held. National Semiconductor had sales of $1.9 billion in its most recent fiscal year. A spokeswoman for National Semi says all of Act Solar’s employees will move to the company.

National Semiconductor agreed to pay an increased “margin”   on the credit agreement it entered into in July 2007 for $1.5 billion that it used to repay money it borrowed to buy back its own shares in an accelerated stock repurchase plan announced the month before.

The additional margin of between Read the rest of this entry »

Brian Halla, National Semiconductor’s chief exec since 1996, sees energy efficiency as a promising growth market for his computer-chip company.

So Halla, who’d been tooling around town in a Jeep Wrangler and a Hummer, recently decided to buy an all-electric Tesla Roadster, a vehicle that carries a $109,000 pricetag. And he dropped by the Mercury News to show it off the other day.

How’s it to drive?

“It’s awesome,” Halla declared. “It is unbelievable. You sit at an intersection three abreast. And you’re literally at the next light before the other two cars have crossed the intersection.”

But the tiny car is a bit of a tight fit for a big fella like Halla, he noted. And driving something that fast (he said it can hit 60 miles per hour in just under four seconds) is somewhat unnerving.

“I have nightmares. I’m not qualified to drive the thing,” he said. “I just need to figure out how to get in and out of it. Then I’m going to be a happy camper. And how to drive it safely.”

National Semiconductor has a new major shareholder in Massachusetts Financial Services, which filed notice with the SEC today that it more than doubled its holdings in the Santa Clara chip maker to 12.7 million shares, up from the 5.6 million shares it reported owning as of Sept. 30, 2008. This raised the funds stake to 5.5 percent, making the fund Nat Semi’s Read the rest of this entry »