News & Events
Harris Semiconductor Announces The Formation Of Space & Defense Products Business

— New Business Unit to Address Growth Opportunities in Commercial and Military Space and Defense

MELBOURNE, FL, November 4, 1998 — Harris Semiconductor announced today the formation of a new business unit to address high-growth opportunities in commercial space, military space, and defense. Harris’ new Space & Defense Business, headed by Ray Odom, combines several analog, mixed signal and power management technologies with unique radiation hardened capability to provide turn-key solutions for the military and commercial space and defense markets.

"Harris Semiconductor is committed as a semiconductor supplier to the space and defense markets for the long haul," says Ray Odom, vice president and general manager of Harris’ Space & Defense Business. "Harris is a world leader in radiation hardened semiconductor technologies and has made the investments in new processes and products to sustain that position well into the future. We see tremendous growth opportunities — particularly in the commercial space market – and will be introducing many new products and process flows in the coming months to address them."

Harris’ Space & Defense Business is comprised of several families of semiconductor products, including rad hard logic, memory, microprocessors, MOSFETs, power ICs, analog switches, data converters, operational amplifiers, multiplexers and buffers. Also offered are analog and mixed signal application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) in a variety of radiation hardened and high reliability processes. The company offers rad hard and high reliability process flows for QML Class Q and V, and will soon announce products compliant to DSSC’s newly-approved QML Class T. In addition to radiation hardened and high reliability products, Harris’ Space & Defense Business also includes commercial microprocessors, microcontrollers and peripheral ICs.

In addition to these products, Harris’ Space & Defense Business offers many radiation hardened discrete products, and provides the industry’s only total rad hard power management solution. More power management products will be introduced in the coming months.

The company recently introduced its Satellite Applications Flow (SAF), a product flow which combines the best features of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) and rad hard Class Q & V – reduced cost and guaranteed radiation hardness. Today, Harris Semiconductor is the world’s largest supplier of radiation hardened circuits and is the number one supplier of rad hard circuits for commercial satellites.

"While many companies are backing away from the space and defense markets, Harris is reinvesting," adds Odom. "With the proliferation of high-volume commercial satellite constellations, such as Iridium and Teledesic, we see double-digit annual growth opportunities. We intend to maximize our design, process and test capabilities for commercial space, and build on our existing technologies for sustained leadership in military and defense."

Harris Corporation's Semiconductor sector manufactures discrete semiconductors and integrated circuits. Product development efforts are focused on innovative "next level solutions" for the communications and power markets. The company’s broad portfolio of products serve many market segments – automotive, industrial, PC computing, wireless networking, signal processing, telecommunications, PC multimedia, consumer electronics, defense and space. The worldwide website is http://www.semi.harris.com.

Harris Corporation, with worldwide sales of more than $3.9 billion, is an international communications and electronics company that provides a wide range of products and services such as wireless and personal communications, digital television (HDTV), health care information, automotive electronics, transportation, business information, defense communications and information and Lanier office products.