Microchip Technology
More info
- Creator
- General Instrument (spin-off)
- Founded
- Headquarters
- Chandler, Arizona
- Type
- Semiconductor company (IDM)
- Website
- microchip.com
The chipmaker behind the PIC microcontroller, which grew about as much by buying its rivals as by designing.
General Instrument's microelectronics division was spun off in 1987 as Microchip Technology, based in Chandler, Arizona. The PIC family — originally "Peripheral Interface Controller" — became the 8-bit world's workhorse: cheap, rugged and hard to kill. Steve Sanghi took over a company near bankruptcy in 1991 and turned it into decades of unbroken profit.
Unlike its fabless rivals, Microchip runs its own wafer fabs. Its appetite for acquisitions mattered just as much: Atmel in 2016 (and with it the AVR core inside Arduino) and Microsemi in 2018. The catalogue now runs from 8-bit PIC to 32-bit ARM and analog.