Intersil

Intersil Corporation is an American global company formed in August 1999 through the acquisition of the semiconductor business of Harris Corporation. Intersil is a power management IC company, specializing in the development of highly efficient power management and precision analog technology for applications in industrial, infrastructure, mobile, automotive and aerospace.

Company history

The original Intersil, Inc. was founded in 1967 by Jean Hoerni to develop digital watch processors. They were originally funded by SSIH, a Swiss Watch Co.<http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/companies.html . When microprocessors emerged to the market in the 1970s, Intersil participated with its 12-bit IM6100, which was the first microprocessor produced in CMOS technology and emulated the PDP-8 instruction set. In 1988 Intersil was taken over by Harris Semiconductor, which had offered the IM6100 as second source. Harris combined these activities with the semiconductor divisions of Radiation Incorporated, General Electric and RCA they had taken over before.

Intersil 6100

The Intersil 6100 family consisted of a 12-bit microprocessor (the 6100) and a range of peripheral support and memory ICs developed by Intersil in the mid-1970s. The microprocessor recognised the PDP-8 instruction set. As such it was sometimes referred to as the CMOS-PDP8. Since it was also produced by Harris Corporation, it was also known as the Harris HM-6100. The Intersil 6100 was introduced in the second quarter of 1975, and the Harris version in 1976.

The 6100 family was produced using CMOS rather than the bipolar and NMOS technologies used by its contemporaries (Z80, 8080, 6502, 6800, 9900, etc.). As a result of its CMOS technology and low clock speeds (8 MHz max. for the Harris HM-6100A), it had relatively low power consumption (less than 100 mW at 10 V/2 MHz) and could be operated from a single supply over the wide range of 4–11 V. Thus, it could be used in high reliability embedded systems without the need for any significant thermal management, if the rest of the system was also CMOS.