WEBVTT - The Fairchild Semiconductor Story Part 2 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:07.240 Get in Touch with Technology was text Stuff from how 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:14.760 Stuff Works dot Com either everyone, and welcome to Text Stuff. 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:18.880 I'm Jonathan Stricklan and we're going to conclude our two 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.400 part episode series. I guess it's a series. It's a 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:24.320 it's a series of two, a series of two on 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:28.240 fair Child Semiconductor. Alright, So in our previous episode we 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:30.200 talked about the founding of the company and why it 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:35.280 was important, the transistor being the big thing and its role. Basically, 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:37.960 a lot of the stuff that fair Child made was 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:41.400 they were components that would go into other people's products. 0:00:41.680 --> 0:00:44.360 So it's not necessarily the stuff that you or I 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:47.440 would buy. Yeah, it's not usually straight to consumer unless 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:49.760 you happen to be building your own big, fancy computers, 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:53.239 in which some people were certainly, you know, but for 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:56.440 most of us, we are buying the stuff that fair 0:00:56.520 --> 0:01:00.160 Child semi conductors would be inside already. But any way, 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:02.640 let's get back to what they were doing. So we're 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:06.880 getting into this era now where we're talking about UH 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:12.080 semiconductor chips that whether they were specific tiny little components 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:16.240 or they were full microprocessors, we're getting tiny, tiny, tiny 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:20.800 elements on smaller and smaller scales, and as we made 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:24.839 smaller components, it meant that it became much more important 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:29.600 to control the environment within which these components were built. Right, 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:33.240 So if I am making a chip today, you know, 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:37.120 I'm talking about creating a chip that has components that 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:40.280 are on the nano scale there maybe maybe a couple 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:44.039 of dozen nanometers wide. So if, for example, a speck 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:47.920 of dust, which is pretty small, get it. Uh, it's 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:53.320 bad times. Yeah, no, you're ruining an entire possibly multiple microprocessors, 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:56.080 you know, depending upon where that moat of dust falls. 0:01:56.120 --> 0:01:58.760 Because while a motive dust to us is very very 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:03.680 tiny compared to the nanoscale, that thing's an enormous asteroid 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:07.280 heading for Earth that's going to wipe out all life, right, 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:12.480 I'll technological semiconductor life. You have to get a nano 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:16.799 sized Bruce Willows to drill a hole and put a 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:20.160 nano sized nuclear weapon in there to destroy it. Or 0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:23.280 you can build what's called a clean room. So clean 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:25.320 rooms are you know, they are what they sound like. 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:29.280 Clean rooms are designed to have as few contaminants as possible. 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:32.360 Ideally you've got no contaminants in there. You have people 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:36.160 wearing those crazy suits that like hazmat suits. It's designed 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:38.639 to cut down on any sort of fibers or dust 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:41.480 that you could give off, um, including things like dead 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.960 skin cells, which creates a lot of dust people. Uh. 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:50.320 You also have really advanced filtration systems that filter the air, 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:54.440 that that circulate the air multiple times within the span 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:57.200 of an hour and really try to filter out any 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:01.400 kind of particulates that could cause problems during the manufacturing process. 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:03.680 And this is part of part of the process of 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:07.079 manufacturing that fair Child was was instrumental in developing, right, 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:10.400 because again, their work really meant that the whole industry 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:13.200 was being pushed forward. You get at this time in 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:16.680 fair Child's history, we're talking about the mid seventies right now. Uh, 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:18.480 there were a lot of companies that were in the 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:21.679 semiconductor business. Now some of them had already kind of 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:24.720 split directly from fair Child, and a few had crashed 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:28.160 and burned. You know, we had Motorolas. Semiconductor industry didn't 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:32.280 last for much longer. Uh. There were being cannibalized by 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:35.920 fair Child, right. Yeah, there were other companies that also 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:39.520 worked in semiconductors and then decided that that business was 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:41.640 not profitable for them, and they got out, but you 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:44.200 still had big companies like Texas Instruments sent there. He 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:48.760 had Intel that was was really started. Um fair fair Child. Meanwhile, 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:50.520 I was having a little bit of of rocky times 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:52.920 around around that period. They had they had lost some 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:55.880 of their upper management. There had been a bunch of layoffs, right, 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:59.520 so they were looking to try and maybe strike out 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:03.840 there and do something really really innovative. And they did 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:08.040 and it didn't work. It was it was nine and 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:11.960 the fair Child Video Entertainment System or v e S 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:16.599 and later called the Channel S it launched. This was 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:21.640 the first programmable cartridge based video game system, right Yeah, 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:25.520 Everything that had come before it was essentially a hardwired system, 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:28.800 meaning that whatever games were on the system, that was it. 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:31.280 That's all the games you got to play. Because they 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:34.440 were hardwired. You could not PLoP a cartridge out and 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:38.160 put something exactly. I had a game of Pong where 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.680 there were eight different versions of Pong. It's all essentially 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:45.039 the same game, just slightly so slightly different that it 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:48.200 was almost like I cannot tell what how tennis and 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:52.680 table tennis are different. Anyway, This was a different approach. 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.560 It was creating the first cartridge based ROMs. Where you 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:58.240 could have a game on a cartridge and you could 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:00.240 pull it out and put in a different game and 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:04.119 have a completely new experience. And it was the first 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:06.960 one totally predated the Atari. Yeah, so here we go. 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:09.160 Why isn't it not a Why is it not a 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:11.760 huge success? Well, they didn't have that much support. They 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:14.400 only ever made I think twenty six games for the thing, 0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:17.480 and it was probably a little too early. I mean, 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:19.440 it just it, it came out, came out. It was 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:21.440 a little half baked, I guess, compared to some of 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.599 the later systems, and so it never got the traction 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:27.320 that other systems got. By the way, you can still 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:31.440 find fair Child video entertainment systems on things like Craig's List. Uh, 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:33.320 there are a few museums that have them. When I 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:36.800 was at E three this past year and when we're 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:38.800 recording this, when I was at the three, they had 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:43.200 a video game um history section of one of the 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:45.520 show floor part of the show floor, and they had 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:49.839 a fair Child entertainment system there. Not that I played it. 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:55.080 I was too busy playing Rampage. But anyway, Uh, yeah, 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:57.120 it was not a big success for fair Child. It 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:00.680 was one of their rare attempts to create something scifically 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:05.800 for consumers, not the enterprise, or not for some other manufacturer. 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:10.559 Moving ahead. In ninety nine, another big year for fair Child. 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:14.440 That's when an oil field services and electronics company called 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:19.360 Schlumburger Limited, when I just love that name. Schlumburger came 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:21.960 in and uh met up with fair Child Camera and 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.520 Instrumentation Company and set up, Hey, this semi connector business 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.640 you've got, you know, the one that's not working so well, 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:34.520 we'd like to take that off your hands for four million, Yeah, 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:37.640 between four hundred and four hundred fifty million, depending upon 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:41.760 which way you read the reports. But yeah, a significant, 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:44.000 a significant investment. They said, well, we'll buy this for 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:47.320 around four hundred million dollars in nineteen seventy nine, and 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:51.039 so they bought the company and hardly anything happened at first, 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:53.599 Like they bought it and it just kind of, you know, 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:56.560 kept chugging along, but there wasn't anything. Everyone was hoping 0:06:56.640 --> 0:07:00.679 for something big, yeah, some big change. So some people 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:04.479 started to call the new company something else besides fair Child. 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:10.040 Since the parent company was Schlumberger, they called it slumber 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:14.520 Child because it was snoozing. So the parent company eliminated 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:18.800 many compensation and benefits packages that fair Child had established 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:21.800 over the course of its existence, which meant that several 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:24.760 key employees wound up leaving. Yeah. Yeah, when you tell 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:27.480 your employees, yeah, you know this bonus program you guys have, 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:29.720 that's not really what we do, so we're cutting it. 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:33.280 That does not help employee moral. I know that this 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:36.680 is ground shaking news here that someone Oh you mean, 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:41.040 eliminating a program makes people upset. Yeah, well, Schlumberger found 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.600 that out, and they saw more talented people leave the company. Now, 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:46.840 keep in mind, at this point, by the time Schlumberger 0:07:46.920 --> 0:07:50.400 came in, there were none of the original members of 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:53.400 the fair Children at fair Child anymore. They had all 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:55.760 gone off to In fact, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:58.480 were two of the last ones to leave, so they 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:00.720 had all gone off to either work four or found 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:03.800 their own companies. But even now with the second round, 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:06.600 like the Hogan's Heroes era, those guys were starting to 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:11.440 leave to were skipping ahead quite a bit. But this 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:14.240 is when fair Child introduced something interesting. Now keep in mind, 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:17.040 even though the company was having trouble, they were still 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:22.160 introducing new innovative stuff in the world of electronic components, 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:24.920 and in fact, we haven't touched on a lot of 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.720 them because frankly, you know, it would be like they 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:30.320 came out with this other transistor and you know it 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:33.440 would mean nothing to you, right right. I mean basically, 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:36.560 it's all just like getting more stuff onto smaller chips 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.920 and making it without making it more power hungry. Exactly. 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:42.400 You just summed it all up, Lauren, that really is 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:45.520 what it was all about. And in fact, in they 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:49.640 introduced the fair Child Advanced Sea Moss technology. UH. Sea 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:54.120 moss stands for a complementary metal ox side semiconductor and 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:57.240 they the short version of this. The acronym in this 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:01.079 case is fact F A C T and UH. This 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.640 is something that's used in microprocessors, micro controllers, other digital 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:09.720 logic circuits. And it was meant to to increase processing 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:13.440 speed but keeping that power consumption level. And it performed 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:17.760 really well against other logic approaches and what was becoming 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:21.680 a very crowded semiconductor market. Now on the executive front, 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:25.640 Slumberger decided to bring in someone from Texas Instruments. In fact, 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:29.000 many people from Texas Instruments. In fact, so many people 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.120 from Texas Instruments. Essentially, they were doing the same sort 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:35.320 of thing at Texas Instruments as what fair Child had 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.560 done to Motorola a few years ago. They brought in 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:41.320 so many managers and executives that some people in the industry, 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:44.760 who we've already learned, we're really hilarious calling its slumber 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:47.959 Child earlier, decided it's no longer slumber Child. Now they're 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:52.520 calling it Texas Instruments West or t I West. That 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:54.760 that they had taken so many people that really they 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:56.840 were just another branch of Texas Instruments at that point. 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:00.920 And eight six they created the first Sea Moss non 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:04.840 volatile electrically erasable memory, which sounds really complicated, but it's 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:07.520 actually a pretty simple concept. It basically just means that 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:10.320 that the computer's memory can retain information even when the 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:13.040 power has been shut off. Yeah, that's what non volatile means. 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:15.559 It means that once and this is really important obviously 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:18.480 for things like personal computers where you need that read 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:22.960 only memory to always have that specific information. The way 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:25.600 you retain that specific information is you create this non 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:29.880 volatile electrically erasable memory. Now, electrically erasable does mean that 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:34.439 you can wipe out the memory that's on that particular microprocessor, 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:37.240 but you do so at a higher voltage than what 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:40.600 would typically be produced in say a computer. So in 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:43.120 other words, I can use my computer all the time 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:46.080 and not worry that the wrong information is going to 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:48.440 get wiped out. Also, I'm not going to change that 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:51.600 it's read only. It's designed to be there and stay 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:54.240 there and keep it stable, so that no matter what 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:56.760 else I do at my computer, that's going to remain 0:10:56.800 --> 0:11:00.560 the same, unless I were to remove it and subjected 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:03.440 to higher voltages, in which case I could erase what 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:06.800 was on there and then program it a new and 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:08.200 then put it in there, and then it would have 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:11.240 a new type of read only memory that would work 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:15.319 or not work despite whether or not there was electricity 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:18.680 running through my machine. So very important in the development 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:23.800 of computers obviously, um and so there was a good 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:27.079 a good development at fair Child. On the management front, 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:31.160 things were still not working so well. Ah. Yeah, this 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:34.840 brings us to to seven, which was when um Schlumberger 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:37.480 tried to sell fair Child, but I think they were 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:39.559 blocked by the government, right, Yeah. I was trying to 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:43.680 sell them to a Fujitsu Limited, a Japanese company, and 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:49.160 the United States government blocked that that that acquisition essentially, 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:52.000 which can sometimes happen. That's when you hear about these 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:55.840 really big, big, big corporate deals, how the government can 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:59.559 get involved in either approve or deny. This was a denial. 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:01.360 Do you West government said, you know, you do not 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:05.960 sell fair Child off to a Japanese company. So instead 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:09.160 they ended up selling it to another American company called 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:13.040 National Semiconductor Corporation for only a hundred and two million 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:17.959 dollars um, which estimates have said that Schlumberger invested like 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:20.319 like one point five billion in the company during the 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:22.960 short period that it was. That was its owner, right right, 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:25.760 So Schlumberger bought the company for between four hundred four 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:29.760 and fifty million, had invested about one point five billion dollars, 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.560 sold it for one and twenty two million, making this 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:36.440 one of the biggest busts in technology history. You know, 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:39.160 we've talked about some of the other ones, like some 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:41.600 deals that seemed like they were good ideas at the 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.000 time and then turned out to be a really bad idea, 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:47.960 like you know, purchasing MySpace for hundreds of millions of 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:53.000 dollars only to find out later that Facebook was the learner. Yeah, 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:56.520 same sort of thing here. Um, you know, Schlumberger bought 0:12:56.520 --> 0:13:00.000 the company and then just really depending upon whom you ask, really, 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:02.480 it seems like the most people say they just didn't 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:03.840 know what to do with it. They just didn't know 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:06.679 how to manage it properly. So it was handed off 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:09.400 to National Semi Conductor Corporation, which, by the way, was 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:12.280 founded by lots of different folks, including some people who 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:15.160 had worked for a fair Child way back in the day. 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:20.080 So um, yeah, big bad news for Schlumburger. Anyway, National 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:23.480 Semi Conductor had been founded in nineteen fifty nine. Uh, 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:25.960 some of them were Some of the founders were employees 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:28.760 who had worked at semi Conductor division of the Sperry 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:33.000 Rand Corporation. Now parts of Sperry Rand are part of 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:36.920 Unicis and some are part of Honeywell. So as I 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:38.840 say this, you know, these might be company names that 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:42.360 you've heard in passing. They have a lot of pretty 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:46.080 tight and contentious relationship with each other because there are 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:48.520 a lot of talent that have worked at one or 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:53.920 the other, or sometimes multiple industry considering. Yeah, so anyway, 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:58.320 some of them were founders from from fair Child, and uh, 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:02.760 National semi Conductor would eventually be acquired by a different 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:05.640 company in two thousand eleven. Another one we've already mentioned 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:10.800 Texas Instruments. Yeah, now, while Texas Instruments acquired National semi Connector, 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:15.360 they did not acquire fair Child. But after and in 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:18.040 a minute, yes, in a minute. Uh, And so we're 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:20.440 gonna jump from eight seven to ninety four. Now, the 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:23.600 reason why we're making this big jump is that again 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:26.880 National semi Connector was trying to see if they could 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:31.960 maybe get Fairchild to become a much more profitable, efficient organization. 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:34.400 And keeping in mind, fair Child was still producing stuff. 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:36.720 They just the company itself was kind of in a 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:41.560 mess um. But in ninety four, fair Child introduced what 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:44.560 was called the Cross volt l c X Low Voltage 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:49.320 Logic series, which had over voltage tolerance. Anyway, they also 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:51.800 created what was called a plug and play i S 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:54.360 A bus adapter, which is i s A stands for 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:58.080 Industry Standard architecture. And you might wonder, well, what the 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.680 heck is a bus? If you aren't familiar with electronics 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:03.120 or computers, you might you know, a bus kind of 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:06.360 you know, white, is that what you put the computer 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:10.160 on to take home. Or is it the communications system 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:14.040 within the computer? Yes? Yeah, a BUS is essentially a 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:16.760 kind of communication system, and it can be inside a computer. 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.520 It can actually be between computers. But it allows data 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.000 to go from one part of a computer or to another, 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:26.960 or between one computer and another. So really, bus is 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:29.320 just this kind of shorthand for saying, this is the 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:32.520 system that allows data to go from one place to another. 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:37.720 Now we've gotten into some pretty crazy times over at 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:41.800 fair Child. We've got National Semiconductor there, uh that has 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:44.160 ownership of fair Child. But things are about to really 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:46.760 change for the company. Before we get into that, though, 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:50.600 let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright, 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:54.560 So fair Child has been through its share of of drama, right, 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:58.200 We had just just the founding of fair Child was dramatic. 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:01.600 Then we had the old era of the fair Children 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:04.480 moving away when they became disenchanted with the company. You 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:08.800 had the Hogan's Heroes era, you had Schlumburger coming in, 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:15.040 you had National Semiconductor in n something else happens right that. 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:19.840 That's ten years after National semi Conductor came in, fair 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:23.440 Child Semiconductor was spun off into its own independent company 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:27.119 based in South Portland, Maine. Yep, that's why the headquarters 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:28.720 are there. And not keep in mind fair Child was 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:33.239 originally one of the Silicon Valley UH companies. Now it's 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:36.600 technically a main company, but it created this South Portland 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:40.720 UM facility just a few years after they had had 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:45.000 been founded. And then UH it doesn't get acquired UH 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:48.120 with National semi Conductor in twenty eleven when Texas Instruments 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:50.280 by his National semi Conductor. The reason is because it 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:53.320 had been spun off into its own company. However, many 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:58.880 of the the assets that fair Child Semiconductor had originally owned, 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:01.560 like it had fallen under their Child semi Conductor ended 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:05.040 up going with National semi Conductor. They ended up taking 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:07.640 many of the production facilities that fair Child had had. 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:10.720 Fair Child kept a couple, including the one in Maine 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:14.000 and one in Pennsylvania, as I recall UM. But this 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:16.600 opened up a new era for fair Child to really 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:20.760 kind of focus and try and reassert what its corporate 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:25.119 identity was and to UH try and get a leadership 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:29.280 role in the industry again. So they started to make 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:34.159 some pretty bold moves, a lot of acquisitions. In fact, 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:37.440 one of the first ones that they acquired was Samsung's 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:42.000 power device division, So this was a division within Samsung itself, 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:46.560 obviously not a full company. And that's another interesting thing 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:49.040 just about corporations in general, is that sometimes you don't 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:51.480 get a full acquisition. They just say, hey, this one 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:54.920 thing that you do, we want that, can we can 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.000 we get that, which is way more complicated than monopoly. 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:02.200 So until there comes site like like hostile take over 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:04.800 the board game, I'm just really not going to understand this. 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:07.800 And frankly, all of my real estate information comes from 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:11.840 a monopoly, which probably explains a few things. But but this, this, 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:14.440 this was a terrific purchase for fair Child because because 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:19.199 Samsung was was creating components that fair Child was was 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:23.880 putting into its own components. And so and uh Kirk 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:27.239 kirk Pond was the president's CEO of fair Child at 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.000 that point, and um, and he said about this purchase, 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:32.640 everyone else is saying that their systems on a chip company. 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:36.359 We're not, and we're proud to be a multi market supplier. Yeah, 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:38.160 and that, you know, that was kind of their entire 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:40.879 strategy at that point, right. Yeah, They also wanted to 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:44.520 diversify as much as they possibly could and not. They 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:47.000 didn't want to be so concentrated on one part of 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:49.880 the industry that if something were to happen, Let's say 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:54.119 that someone was to come up with a an industry 0:18:54.320 --> 0:19:00.879 changing discovery that would make certain parts of electra obsolete. 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:04.400 If that's the one thing your company does, you are 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:09.200 out of luck. So diversification really important. In two thousand, 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:12.200 fair Child launched the Interface and Logic Group, which was 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:16.160 a division meant to create hardware for Internet and wireless applications, 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:19.600 because you know, two thousand, that's that's not quite a 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:24.280 decade into the Internet era for the general public. Yeah, 0:19:24.320 --> 0:19:27.600 you know. Of course, research facilities had been playing with 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:30.960 this stuff for years and going nana nanna, except they 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.280 were typing it and using lots of as key art, 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:35.679 but the rest of us were largely ignorant of it. 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:37.800 Well two thousand, of course, now we're getting the part 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:41.240 where this is really starting to become a phenomenon, and 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:43.800 fair Child so we can't ignore this. We have to 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:45.919 make sure we incorporate this, and might we might have 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:49.560 waited too long in fact, and the company also started 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:53.080 making more acquisitions. They acquired a company called qt up 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:57.639 to Electronics. They also acquired Cota micro Circuits, and they 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:00.760 also acquired the power management division from I Grow Linear 0:20:01.640 --> 0:20:04.439 and uh so this is, you know, another example of 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:06.840 how they were really trying to be bold and to 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:10.720 to diversify as much as possible. They launched something called 0:20:10.720 --> 0:20:13.720 the moss FET b g A package. And now I'm 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:17.159 going to explain what that is. So moss FET stands 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:20.640 for ms f ET. It stands for metal oxide semiconductor 0:20:20.760 --> 0:20:24.000 field effect transistor, So doesn't that clear it all up? 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:27.200 And b g A stands for ball grid array. Now, 0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:29.640 what a ball grid array is essentially a different way 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:32.800 of creating those little interconnection pins that you use to 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:37.880 plug various electronic components into stuff. Now, the ball grid 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:40.960 array allowed you to create more of those interconnections to 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:45.240 create greater throughput. Right, So you're you're increasing the processing 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:49.720 power of various components by giving more connections between that 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:52.760 and the other elements that are in whatever you're talking about, 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:54.959 whether it's you know, a mobile phone or a computer 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:57.000 or whatever. Right. And and this is one of those, yeah, 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:00.960 one of those miniaturization uh techniques right that that has 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:05.200 that that basically has helped make mobile phones possible. Yeah, 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:09.280 the whole more processing power, less power consumption. That's really 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:12.320 what we're going at here. So again they're still showing 0:21:12.359 --> 0:21:16.080 that they're very innovative in that space. Now, two thousand 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:19.280 and five, they introduced a chip that helped reduce while 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:21.520 it was a signal line reduction for mobile handsets, and 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:24.000 again it was one of those things that makes mobile 0:21:24.040 --> 0:21:28.720 handsets much more uh, much more powerful, and much more 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:32.560 useful in the hands of consumers. Uh. It also consumed 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:34.920 very little power. It was a very small and very 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:38.080 light chip, which made it ideal for mobile use because 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:40.879 obviously the bigger and heavier it is, the less likely 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:43.640 it's going to be a useful component for something where 0:21:43.640 --> 0:21:46.199 you're carrying it around with you all the time. And 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:50.200 that's also when the fair Child got a new CEO 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:55.119 who is now the current CEO, Mark Thompson. He becomes CEO, 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:57.879 and he had previously been executive vice president of Manufacturing 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:02.800 and Technology uh over at Fairchild, so they had promoted 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:05.159 him from within. But before that he had also been 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:08.240 an executive at Tycho Electronics and and also rake him 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:11.240 Electronics as well. As I want to say it was 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:13.800 big Bear, but I don't have it in my notes. 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:16.080 But as I recall, that's also who he was with, 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:20.479 so he had a long history of working in the 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:24.280 industry before he even joined Fairchild. But he joined Fairchild 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:26.840 as an executive and was promoted to the role of 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:30.119 CEO in two thousand five. Two thousand seven, that's when 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:33.200 the company celebrated fifty years of being a company. They 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:36.360 had been founded in nineteen fifty seven, and so there 0:22:36.440 --> 0:22:39.760 was a three day celebration held at the Computer History 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:43.320 Museum and I think like like two thousand um fair 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:47.480 Children showed up. Yeah, so people from the very earliest 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:49.920 days of fair Child ended up showing up at this 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:52.680