The Scoop...

Up in the clouds

After developing an advanced computer chip, former MIT professor Suhas Patil needed an experienced business partner to help start a company to reap the benefits of his ingenuity. He found just the man in Mike Hackworth, a Northern California native, then senior vice president at Signetics. In 1984 the two men founded Cirrus Logic, a name suggested by Hackworth's daughter Lauren, after the highest clouds in the sky. In 1996 the company proved that it could live up to the name. Cirrus Logic soared to sales of more than $1.1 billion, up from $9 million just eight years before. This made Cirrus Logic the fastest Silicon Valley semiconductor firm ever to break into the billion-dollar-a-year club.

Murky skies

While a strong market for multimedia PC's and wireless communications provided a boost for the company, demand for its 2-D graphics took a hard dive. Just one year after reaching the $1 billion mark, sales dropped more than $200 million to $917 million. Cirrus Logic also gave pink slips to 15 percent of its workforce. Even with a broad portfolio of products and technologies, with applications in multimedia, communications, and mass storage, Cirrus underwent massive restructuring, including the sale of its wireless infrastructure equipment unit in 1996 for $23 million. During this period, Patil announced his removal from day-to-day operations and the new title of chairman emeritus. David French took over as president and CEO in June 1998.

Twirling through the spin cycle

Cirrus chose to spin off its networking chips and telecom sectors in November 1998, creating Basic Communications. Three months later in February 1999, the company created Ambient Technology to take care of its modem chip business. Last came the R&D spin off, Cradle Technologies Inc.

Fiscal year 1999 ended unfavorably for Cirrus, due to a closing loss of nearly half a billion dollars. The restructuring of the company continued to take its toll on the budget, with costs beating Q1 revenues of fiscal 2000 by over $7 million. With the majority of its business allocated in storage and audio ICs, French believes Cirrus' future looks promising. In November 1999 he stated, "we're more focused and should be able to grow faster."

Harmonizing over the Internet

Cirrus jumped aboard the online express train of music in fall 1999, producing chips compatible to the popular MP3 and WMA formats. In February 2000, a security feature was added to Cirrus' line of Maverick chips, one of the industry's first set of chips built with the power to detect illegal tampering. I-Jam Multimedia selected this line of audio chips in May 2000 for its new Win-Jam Digital Audio Player.

On the move

Cirrus moved its company headquarters from Frement, CA to Austin, TX in April 2000. The Austin office, in operation since 1991, holds nearly 70 percent of the company's employees and has been the site for a large majority of its corporate functions.