Cirrus Logic

An exciting revolution is taking place in digital entertainment electronics. And it's sweeping across 650 million households worldwide as living rooms magically transform into thrilling home theaters. The market opportunity is enormous for DVD-based systems as well as Audio/Video Receivers, Game Boxes, Personal Video Recorders, Set-top Boxes, MP3/CD Players, and Wireless Residential Gateways. Winning in these growth markets will require powerful IC-plus-software solutions that deliver the state-of-the-art features that consumers demand. One semiconductor company is exceptionally well positioned to provide such solutions. A company that stands ready to offer the worldwide support and digital entertainment focus needed to capitalize on this timely window of opportunity. A company that offers Total Entertainment OEM solutions in every room and every corner, enabling consumers to experience extreme entertainment from digital content like never before. This company is Cirrus. The firm reincorporates as Cirrus Logic; Michael Hackworth is named president and CEO. Cirrus goes public and develops a VGA controller for flat panel liquid crystal diode displays. The firm begins its second joint fabrication venture with Lucent Technologies Inc. The company exits the magnetic storage IC market to focus on consumer electronics. Cirrus Logic, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of audio chips used in consumer entertainment electronics, including audio/video receivers, DVD-based products, game boxes, and personal video recorders. The firm sells over 200 products to 3,000 customers such as Apple, Bose, Creative Technologies, Dell , IBM, Panasonic, and Sony. During the latter half of the 1990s, Cirrus restructured operations and eventually exited the magnetic storage integrated circuit (IC) market in order to focus on higher margin analog technologies that are used in the audio, communications, and data acquisition markets. The company also develops digital signal processing (DSP) technologies used for Internet-related applications. Cirrus Logic traces its origins to a small company called Patil Systems, which was founded in Utah in 1981 by Suhas Patil, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor then teaching at the University of Utah. While at MIT, Patil had developed a microchip-level software system for controlling computer hard disk drives that he called Strategic/Logic Array (S/LA). The S/LA system represented a substantial improvement in the management of hard drive functions since it behaved more consistently and was easier to design than existing systems. Patil gathered together several associates and formed Patil Systems to market his new product. Over the next three years, however, the company's efforts produced little commercial success. "I made the rounds and couldn't give it away," Patil would later recall in Upside. For help with the marketing and management of his tiny, eleven-employee company, Patil contacted Michael Hackworth, a former marketing executive for Fairchild Industries and Motorola who was senior vice-president of Signetics, the Sunnyvale, California-based semiconductor subsidiary of North American Philips, in 1984. The prospect of working with Patil sparked Hackworth's interest. Although a prominent executive at Signetics, he was unhappy with the way the company operated and especially with the inefficiency with which it introduced new products. When Patil first contacted him, Hackworth thought that S/LA software might be of use to Signetics. However, as he later remarked in Upside, "When I got in and met the people and understood what they had, it hit me like a ton of bricks that this could be the basis for a new kind of chip company." Hackworth perceived that Patil's S/LA system could be used to develop a wide range of highly specialized semiconductors in a relatively short time. All the development process would require was a systems engineer who could program and arrange the chips to facilit