Texas Instruments Buys National Semiconductor For $6.5B 121
CWmike writes "Texas Instruments on Monday announced it has agreed to acquire semiconductor company National Semiconductor for $6.5 billion in an all-cash transaction. TI, which makes low-power chips, said it would combine its 30,000 analog products and advanced manufacturing capabilities with the offerings of National Semiconductor, which makes analog integrated circuits. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in six to nine months, the companies said in a joint statement. Look out, [chip maker name here]?"
accounting/finance FYI here... (Score:2)
In the relevant accounting/finance sense of the term, cash refers to not only piles of physical currency but also to some other highly liquid assets such as bank account balances.
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Like amazing A/D converters that can saturate an FPGA with data flow. Here's to hoping for a cheap, consumer SDR! :D ...
I'll just wait over there...
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If it has a PLL; sorry no. SDR should have a wideband A/D converter and some filters. You flatten the lower bands and tune into the "mirror images" of signals above the top-range of the A/D converter's maximum sample rate instead of tuning.
Higher prices? (Score:1)
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What do you mean? Texas Instruments samples have always been free for me!
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Well, yes. It's people like you who keep requesting free samples with no intention of actually purchasing anything from them that has caused entire universities and countries to be banned from the sample program.
Please stop.
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Depends I guess, I seem to notice for a lot of things... from archaic 74xx glue logic chips, to SMPS controllers and such, natsemi chips are usually double the price of a identical or similar TI chip.
National has a big selection of random analog stuff that TI doesn't seem to produce, so I guess its a way to get a wider presence...
Not sure about their microprocessors and shit like that - didn't natsemi sell theirs years back anyway? - geode at least.
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Is this based on Digikey? I think that Digikey has lower prices for TI chips in general (relative to other retailers). Probably worked out some kind of deal.
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You don't pay the RRP for a chip though, you get a NSM sales rep (or any company) and you explain that you would like to use their chip, but the competitors chip is better priced and offers similar features. The prices then become more competitive. I'm guessing that won't work for very small numbers of chips, but if you're only using a few what difference does a few dollars make?
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If you're a small custom contract electronics shop here in the US with two or three people, a few dollars a chip can make a big difference. Multiply that by how many chips on whatever board you're making and it adds up quickly. Especially in a down economy where manufacturers aren't ordering many custom control boards for production lines or other uses.
Some of the contracts will be quite profitable, but many will be marginal at best. As we said around the shop (no longer in business) "You have to kiss a lot
If you can even buy them (Score:4, Interesting)
TI no longer keeps stock on many chips. When the distributors run out the factory sits and waits for the orders to come in. Some of these chips have lead times of 26 weeks, half a year! You're basically screwed and have to start bargaining with brokers.
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I agree. I used to use their DACs, been badly burned and had to go through three board revisions: first I used a 4 channel chip, then a 2 channel version of the same thing, then I switched to a similarly performing chip from ADI that was never out of stock, and cost less. The only TI parts I use are a good ADC that always seems to be in stock, and some logic glue that has multiple sources but comes cheapest from TI for some reason.
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+1, Funny
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Just like the TI calculators. Yep, those never go down in value, always the same price since the 90s.
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Just like the TI calculators. Yep, those never go down in value, always the same price since the 90s.
Not if you factor in inflation, which means the price is gradually going up. However the capabilities are also going up.
If the capabilities are going up faster than inflation, then yes, the value is going up.
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However the capabilities are also going up.
Relevant [wordpress.com]
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Amen. I have a TI-83 circa 1996 and a TI-89 circa 1999, and I don't feel at a disadvantage at all compared to newer models. There are a few MINOR tweaks here and there, but overall they're still about the same critters as the old models.
That said, the fact that they don't change does bode well for students on a budget who want one off the used market. I kept mine because it's a gadget and I like gadgets (though I haven't turned them on in years), but it seems there's always college students dumping their
Dedicated calculators an outdated tech ... (Score:2)
Just like the TI calculators. Yep, those never go down in value, always the same price since the 90s.
I'd say the price points go back to the 1970s.
A shameless plug but you can get the functionality of several dedicated handheld calculators in a single app for your smartphone these days: Perpenso Calc [perpenso.com]. Scientific, statistics, business, hex and bill/tip. You can even cherry pick the functionality you want and only pay for the "calculators" you need. Handheld calculators are going to largely become a victim of the convergence/consolidation of digital devices. Far fewer people are going to need/want the sta
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Looks like it's got a ways to go to catch up even with my good old TI85. No graphs, no matrix math, no stored variables (?), and no scripts. Oh, and it needs a chemistry mode and a units conversion mode. Not saying it is useless but I am not buying it just yet.
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Looks like it's got a ways to go to catch up even with my good old TI85. No graphs, no matrix math, no stored variables (?), and no scripts. Oh, and it needs a chemistry mode and a units conversion mode. Not saying it is useless but I am not buying it just yet.
Fair enough, however the handhelds that I am referring to are simpler than the TI85. Perpenso Calc [perpenso.com] is competing against the $30-$50 handhelds from TI and HP, not the $100'ish handhelds. Thats for future versions. :-)
I appreciate the feedback. Its sometimes more useful to hear from those who chose not to buy than those who did.
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If you have an Android phone, and you prefer HP calculators to TI, you have the option of Droid48 [android.com]. It's a port of the X48 project, and it works pretty well for me!
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RealCalc does everything i need. Gonna try Droid48 though, but i never found a use myself for graphical calculators.
While i'm at it, i might as well ask. What is the most everyday use of a graphical calculator? (and i'm not talking about playing games or applying 1 operator to n values)
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While i'm at it, i might as well ask. What is the most everyday use of a graphical calculator?
Outside of school? Not a lot for me. They were great for solving complex equations in school (and the graphing capabilities helped A LOT there), but out in the real world they haven't helped nearly as much.
That said, I think a lot of their utility has been diminished by smartphones and/or PDA's. A lot of what made such calculators attractive was their programmability. They were the original "There's an app for that" device for calculations, though of much more limited popularity. Example: I often use my
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Well on mine (some time in the 80's?) I know I wrote an analogue clock program for it. It's not a game, right.
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I've seldom used the graphing capabilities of graphing calculators, even in school. I do like to use some of the minor features of fancy calculators, though, even for everyday use. I like RPN input. I like having a multi-line screen that preserves the last few results, if I want to compare a few calculations. I like being able to enter a series of numbers, then perform a sequence of operations on the entire series at once, again to compare results. If I have to repeat a more complex operation a number of ti
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Sadly, professors still live in the past, and they are not going to allow you to use a cellphone during an exam due to fear of cheating/etc.
Also, "Nobody has ever been fired for buying IBM" applies in this field too, and no scientist is going to do any important calculation with some app he downloaded from the market. Same goes for doctors, engineers, etc.
Single-purpose devices are going to exist for a while for the very same reason faxes are still around. People actually write documents on their computers
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Sadly, professors still live in the past, and they are not going to allow you to use a cellphone during an exam due to fear of cheating/etc.
I've been to grad school in the recent past. Some professors allowed laptops with the caveat that the wifi was disabled and of course no wired connection. Some classes were mathematically oriented and we needed to run specialty computational apps or use a spreadsheet, other classes had essay type answers and the professor wanted electronic submissions of answers. For similarly minded professors they could require that the phone be in "airplane mode" where all wireless circuitry is powered down. There is hop
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I just find myself more productive doing work on a nice HP RPN calculator with all the physical buttons. I've tried doing the same thing on a smartphone (and before them on pocket computers), but productivity drops off. It's almost purely visceral. Even the applications that mimic HP calcs just are not as smooth.
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Real calculators are RPN anyway.
Re:Another monopoly in the making. (Score:5, Funny)
Calculators real RPN are anyway.
That fixed you for there.
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Not sure if TI's can natively do RPN. If not, it's a shame. Once you get used to RPN, algebraic notion is quaint. I find it faster and easier to use.
All personal preference really. I perfectly understand RPN, and can use an HP calculator just fine, but I'm much faster on a TI-89. It's not something that's intrinsically better or worse - just different.
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Win?
that roaring sound you heard in the distance... (Score:3)
is the sound of thousands of laser printers firing up, and spitting out epic number of resumes
Re:that roaring sound you heard in the distance... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:that roaring sound you heard in the distance... (Score:4, Insightful)
Harder to do that these days when the big companies own all the patents.
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is the sound of thousands of laser printers firing up, and spitting out epic number of resumes
Not really. National has always been laying off workers periodically. This will just be another cycle of layoffs, as far as National is concerned.
Email from TI (Score:4, Informative)
I am excited to let you know that TI has signed a definitive agreement to purchase National Semiconductor, uniting two industry leaders that have a common commitment to solving your analog needs. I want to reinforce TI's commitment to you, our customer, as we merge our two companies.
This acquisition will allow us to address your analog needs with a product portfolio of unmatched breadth and depth. National's 12,000 products plus TI's 30,000 means more performance, power and packaging options when selecting the right ICs for your application. And we'll provide a common set of best-in-class online tools to make the selection and design process easier.
Our combined sales and applications team of 2,500 will be larger than any in the industry so we can provide more customers with greater face-to-face support than ever before.
Our manufacturing operations will offer more capacity to support your growth. TI's fabs and National's available capacity can enable higher production levels.
While both companies will operate independently pending the close, our goal thereafter is to make the integration process as seamless as possible. No requalification of products will be necessary since National's manufacturing sites will continue to be utilized. Part numbers from both companies will remain the same. There will be no obsolescence of products.
I'm excited about what the integration of our two companies will mean for you: an unmatched portfolio to meet your analog needs, an extensive sales and applications network to ease the design process, and manufacturing capacity to support your growth.
You can learn more about the acquisition at www.ti.com/acquire, including answers to frequently asked questions and video messages from TI leaders regarding the acquisition.
Thank you for choosing TI. I look forward to a great future together.
Re:Email from TI (Score:5, Funny)
damnit, announce when you're posting something serious. I read that whole long thing looking for the joke to start.
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Really? The whole thing was such typical business-speak I chuckled through the whole thing. :-D Not quite buzzword bingo level, though.
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Re:Not so fun if you work for National Instruments (Score:4, Insightful)
... ...
-- Who keeps Windows in the labs?
-- We do!, we do!
(for those who don't know, the abomination known as LabVIEW)
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Good luck making it talk to the "LabVIEW-supported" devices if you are not running Windows.
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*shudder*
I eventually replaced most of our Labview hardware control software with RealBasic and later C#. I know some overly serious folks don't like those two, but they are *perfect* Labview replacements. You get the same "draw the interface and attach functions" approach but you can write actual code instead of drawing street maps. It did help that National Instruments documents their APIs very well, so rolling up the API declares was a breeze.
Stability (Score:4, Insightful)
And hot on their heels... (Score:3, Informative)
What CAN'T that guy do?! (Score:1)
First TI popularizes auto-tune and now he enters the power management technology industry with an almost seven billion dollar buyout? This guy is AMAZING!
Good. (Score:2)
National had some the oldest fab equipment in the business. That place had equipment even China didn't want.
But you know what they say.
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/09/real_men_have_f.php [siliconvalleywatcher.com]
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, at least when I got out of the semi business a few years ago you could still do a lot with old 5" and 6" wafers. There's a lot to be said for having your own process line, despite the fabless trend, especially in the analog world. An in-house analog process enables a semi manufacturer to build unique parts that a competitor can't as easily replicate. If you can get a higher voltage or current in a similar sized driver IC you can outsell on features, or you can shrink the die and match features and outsell on price. But if you're both buying the same process from the foundry, what advantage do you have that the competition can't get by offering your engineers more money?
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TI is currently ramping their 300mm analog fab. Some analysists dubbed it "death star fab" - guess why...
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There's also a lot to be said for having a captive fab when the DoD comes knocking and says "we want a part that *we* can guarantee doesn't have any backdoors in the silicon". NatSemi has a prototyping fab and a secure fab in Santa Clara, and the secure fab -- I'm told, insofar as I've never seen the inside as I don't have the clearance required -- will build you a part with your engineers as involved as you want, from design, through fab, to test and packaging. That's worth a lot to a bunch of customers,
"All cash"? (Score:3)
TI has $6.5 billion in cash lying around and we're wondering why our economy is in the shitter and where all the jobs are?
Corporate tax laws should be changed so they're taxed for wealth as well as income. Maybe they could put that money to work for something besides buying out the competition.
Re:"All cash"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Corporate tax laws should be changed so they're taxed for wealth as well as income.
Because it would be better if they paid all the rich owners a dividend?
Ask the bank who is holding their $6.5 billion why they won't loan you any of that money, and the answers to THAT are why our economy is in the shitter.
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Uh, I thought the fact that banks *were* loaning out wads of cash to high-risk low-equity customers was a heavy contributor to the current mess we're in.
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Uh, I thought the fact that banks *were* loaning out wads of cash to high-risk low-equity customers was a heavy contributor to the current mess we're in.
And you would be correct. And now they've done a 180 and won't lend to anyone unless the government backs it. I bought a house last year and had to keep under the HUD limit. It's had the effect of pushing all of the houses in my neighborhood down towards the HUD limit, almost without regard to how well-kept or nice the house itself is.
TI has "only" $1 billion in the bank. They need to borrow $5 billion and change. National has $1 billion in the bank, so that takes care of the collateral on another billion.
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The intelligent among us realize there is little to no connection between the two. Everybody with any intelligence keeps at least some cash around regardless of economic conditions.
Yeah. Tax success and prud
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$6.5 billion is not "some cash". It's a war chest. And the war is against us.
My biggest concern isn't even with the 'cash' it's with the anti-competitive, anti-free market behavior of buying your competition.
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Yes
And they have it all in coins, to make matters worse
It's all in a huge vault, with a big $ painted on the side.
Ask for a Mr. Scrooge
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Why would they have that amount of cash lying around? Do you think there is this magic cash register somewhere with over 300 million 20 dollar bills? Most of the time, when I see transactions like these, the bought company picks up the tab by lending the maximum amount of money from the bank. Of course, the big cheeses get a lot of dough from the transaction. The ones that are actually in power, are now leading a bigger company, and get a higher salary.
How do dat works now? (Score:2)
So... the government takes a chunk of their assets and that encourages TI to hire more people... how exactly?
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This ain't so hard, QD. The more these warchests are taxed, the more investment the companies will make in new facilities and manpower.
The notion is "use it or lose it". And "use it" does not include buying up your competition.
If you look at the upper bracket tax rates historically, alongside unemployment rates and GDP, you'll find that once the upper bracket tax rates go above 50%, unemployment go
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TI has $6.5 billion in cash lying around and we're wondering why our economy is in the shitter and where all the jobs are?
No. Are you fucking stupid? A cash transaction doesn't mean TI wheeled at pallet of hundred dollar bills around. That "cash" is numbers in a bank account. The banks don't keep all the money you give them locked in a vault. They put it to work in investments.
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Yes, corporations refer to it as a "war chest". Most often, "war chests" are used to buy the competition.
I hope you didn't think I meant to suggest that TI would be "wheeling" any "pallets" of hundred dollar bills around.
Are you suggesting that "$6.5billion in cash" doesn't mean "$6.5billion in cash"?
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Corporations should just have to pay sales tax on everything, just as everyone else should. Equity sales that transfer control (ie. >= 50%+1) would pay the sales tax on the cumulative equity purchased by the buyer - as would any subsequent equity purchases by that majority owner. At about 25%, that would be $1.625B (non-control equity sales tax could be 0.01-1%, depending on how much the equity industries cost the public to manage that year). Which could pay for the public's government services that are
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Still shocked! (Score:2)
Re:Still shocked! (Score:5, Insightful)
You shouldn't be. You can't do digital without analog, despite what every pointy-headed manager puts in his powerpoint slides. Power is analog and that's a sizeable fraction of your computer budget. Motor control (hard drives), sensors (you name it), a lot of user interface, are all analog. Even signal transmission is analog, although if you set your thresholds just right you can pretend it's digital. In fact this is where a lot of semi companies make their money, by encapsulating the messy analog into the chip so all you have to do is put down two capacitors and hook up the digital interface, because people are escared of analog.
Can you tell I'm an analog guy? I sure hope so.
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Can you tell I'm an analog guy? I sure hope so.
Yes, I can see that. What I don't understand is what you're doing on slashdot. This place is generally for comp sci types. Even though I'm an EE, I'm more on the digital side of things, with lots of software thrown in for good measure.
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It's clear what you're doing on Slashdot: making baseless, arrogant assertions about the world, especially about Slashdot, especially about meaninglessly split hairs like "Slashdot is for digital EEs, not analog".
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Also, ADCs and DACs. As far as I remember National, Analog Devices and Philips had most ADCs (I mean, the good ones)
Too bad most of them are stuck in a package today
Can you tell I'm an analog guy?
More or less, but yeah. Analog is cool, but it's difficult. Give me the digital part any day of the week.
(Depends really, one thing is creating an amplifier from scratch/transistors, other is using Opamps, still, you have to play with it sooner or later)
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Good digital circuits--the guts on the IC anyway--aren't easy, either. It's one thing to build a flip-flop, say, from basic logic gates and just paste in the relevant FETs. It's another to go back to first principles and build a bistable multivibrator taking advantage of the unique properties of the FETs you're using and the features you want the flip-flop to have.
In the data sheets, those equivalent logic circuits are often simply operationally equivalent; they don't represent the actual integrated circu
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Analog is cool, but it's difficult. Give me the digital part any day of the week.
Ha. I went from RF/microwave to fully digital. The former had become boring, buying pre-rolled amps and mixers and couplers and whatnot and putting them together on a board. Creating a gain profile was a highlight of the day. FPGAs are much more fun. My RF background did make things easier when I started doing digital above 1 GHz clock rates. I had an intuitive feel for VSWR and the need for terminations. Now they have digitally controlled terminations right on the FPGAs- bless you Xilinx.
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Analog is *enormously* important. It's just not trendy. The world is analog, and for one digital systems will need an interface to the analog world.
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Analog is getting bigger and bigger. Many applications are driven by "green" technology - power devices for electric cars, control circuits and switching converters for power conversion, LED controllers and so on. The automotive semiconductor industry is very delighted with the current development. The last figures I heard were that 20-30% of the costs of a european mid range car are electronics, with a sharp upwards trend. American cars and cars for the american market are usually based on slightly simpler
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The last figures I heard were that 20-30% of the costs of a european mid range car are electronics, with a sharp upwards trend. American cars and cars for the american market are usually based on slightly simpler and older technology.
The current figures are the electronics in a car account for over 50% of the costs.
Re:Still shocked! (Score:4, Insightful)
Without analogue our digital wouldn't work. Analogue circuitry does everything from providing power, to providing time references for digital pulses.
Horatio Says : (Score:5, Funny)
YEEEEEEEAAAAHHHHH !
$6.5 billion in an all-cash transaction (Score:1)
What other chip maker? (Score:1)
all-cash transaction (Score:1)
Downhill since Robert Pease retired (Score:2)
National has gone downhill since Robert Pease retired. If you don't know who Pease is, then you probably don't know much about analog electronics. Thats all I'm saying.
the circle of life (Score:1)
TI engineers leave to form Cyrix -> National Semiconductor acquires Cyrix -> Texas Instruments acquires National Semiconductor.
(note: Cyrix's empty husk was actually sold off by National circa 1998)
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-> TI lays off engineers -> TI engineers go to X -> ...
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What??? Are you serious? It's the other way around. National makes the cheapest, crappiest, volume parts around. They have some high end parts, but nothing that compares with the high precision parts from other semiconductor companies. Especially compare National to Linear or Analog Devices for quality.
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Challenge accepted. :-\