Silicon Laboratories, Inc. (NASDAQ: SLAB) is a mixed signal fabless semiconductor company based in Austin, Texas.

The company was founded in 1996 by three veterans from the former Crystal Semiconductor – Nav Sooch, Dave Welland and Jeff Scott.[3] The company's CEO is Tyson Tuttle.[4] The company went public in 2000.[5] Silicon Labs leverages its intellectual property to develop mixed-signal ICs that typically integrate a number of discrete functions on a single CMOS die. The company has leveraged its technology portfolio to expand into a number of large markets. The company has three main businesses:

Access - which includes analog modems for set-top boxes, point of sale terminals and multi-function printers, SLICs for VoIP gateways, and PoE devices for networking gear

Broadcast - which includes single-chip AM/FM radios and silicon TV tuners and demodulators

Broad-based - which includes microcontrollers, timing ICs (clocks and oscillators), digital isolators, short-range wireless receiver ICs and human interface solutions such as touch controllers and proximity sensors.

Silicon Labs has about 900 employees worldwide and research and development offices located throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. Silicon Labs' customers include Samsung, Huawei, LG, and Thomson.

History

With the acquisition of Cygnal Integrated Products, Silicon Labs marked their entry into the multi-billion dollar general-purpose analog and MCU markets and began building its Broad-based business, which is now 40% of company revenue. Silicon Labs’ 8-bit MCUs are based on a patented implementation of the 8051 instruction set architecture that is ‘hard wired’ implementation of the 8051 microcontroller CPU, as opposed to the original micro-coded version. The instruction set is mapped to a basic three-stage pipeline to increase throughput while maintaining an 8-bit program memory width. Silicon Labs differentiation in the market is the integration of analog peripherals to create a mixed-signal MCU that is designed to reduce the system cost without sacrificing performance. The company introduced ARM-based, 32-bit MCUs in early 2012. Also focused on the integration of high performance peripherals, the 32-bit family eases development with free Eclipse-based development suite including a full compiler, debugger and AppBuilder rapid prototyping utility.

Also part of the company's Broad-based business are clock and oscillator products that are customizable online as well as digital isolators that replace optocouplers, short range wireless receivers and transceivers for sub-GHz applications and an emerging portfolio of touch and proximity sensing products for consumer and industrial applications.

Acquisitions

2003 December, Silicon Labs acquired Cygnal Integrated Products, an Austin-based innovator of analog-intensive, highly integrated 8-bit microcontrollers (MCUs).
2007-02-08, NXP Semiconductors announced that it is to acquire Silicon Labs' Cellular Communications Business.[6]
2008, Silicon Labs announces acquisition of Integration focused ion beam for rent Associates
2010 April, Silicon Labs announced acquisition of Limerick based 'ChipSensors' and California based Silicon Clocks
2011 January, Silicon Labs acquires Silicon Valley based SpectraLinear[7]
2012 Silicon Labs acquires ZigBee manufacturer Ember[8 reverse engineering]
June 2013, Silicon Labs announced intention to acquire low-power ARM microcontroller specialist Energy Micro.