Microsemi pockets VT Silicon

BANGALORE, INDIA: VT Silicon has been acquired by Microsemi Corp., a company that manufactures high performance analog mixed signal integrated circuits, high reliability semiconductors, and radio frequency (RF) subsystems, said an EETimes report. VT Silicon designs and manufactures multi-band RFIC solutions for the mobile wireless broadband market.

VT Silicon’s patented linearization technologies are leveraged with silicon germanium to build low cost, highly integrated, high performance RF Front End products. Their Linearity Enhancement Technology boosts the linear operating range of power amplifiers to accommodate complex LTE and WiMax OFDM signals for the 4G cellular LTE and WiMax markets.

Sources at Microsemi say that now they will be able to offer their industry leading RF product offering to next generation WLAN and WiMax markets due to this acquisition. Microsemi is attempting to establish itself as a leader in providing consumer wireless devices, which is reportedly a global market that will exceed 2.6 billion units by 2014.

Interestingly, both companies have their foundations in the defense industry.

Microsemi's business model blends high-volume commercial market opportunities with the growth and content opportunities that abound in the aerospace, defense and security end markets. The company had acquired White Electronic Designs Corp., a company that builds ICs and modules for defense and aerospace applications in April 2010.