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National Semi Closing Irvine Production Site

National Semi Closing Irvine Production Site

By ANDREW SIMONS

National Semiconductor Corp. is closing up shop in Orange County.

This month, the Santa Clara-based chipmaker plans to shutter what’s left of an Irvine plant that employed 86 people. The closure comes as National Semiconductor is cutting and trimming its businesses to shore up costs.

“Since 2000, we’ve reduced our global workforce by about 1,500,” said Jeff Weir, a spokesman for National Semiconductor. “It’s been in little dribs and drabs.”

National Semiconductor notified Irvine workers last year of its plans for the facility,a plant that made ceramics modules for wireless networking. The company also filed a notice to lay off workers with California officials.

“These were modules we determined we wouldn’t need,” Weir said.

The closure marks the end to a bit of defensive conversion.

National Semiconductor bought the facility from Hughes Aircraft Co. in 1995. It once was part of Hughes’ Newport Beach-based microelectronics division, which made chips and other electronics for defense, space, automotive, medical and other markets.

Hughes workers joined National Semiconductor as part of the deal.

National Semiconductor received an $8 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to try and commercialize the Irvine plant’s low temperature co-fired ceramic process, which at the time was used mostly for military electronics.

The chipmaker went after wireless phones and later wireless networking devices with its ceramic substrates,the base layer of a module of several chips.

National Semiconductor competes with Asian companies, including TDK Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co., as well as others in the market for ceramic components.

Now National Semiconductor is trying to find a company to take over its Irvine lease, according to Weir.

For the past two months, National Semiconductor has been operating a skeleton staff at the 30,000-square-foot facility. Work is set to stop there at the end of the month.

At the same time, National is adding staff elsewhere.

Two weeks ago, National Semiconductor said it was investing $58 million in a Portland, Maine, plant and adding 100 people to its work force there. The company makes chips for consumer devices in Maine.

The Irvine layoffs mark yet another change to Orange County’s chip sector, which has seen a makeover in the past few years.

The county’s largest chipmakers, including Irvine-based Broadcom Corp. and Newport Beach’s Conexant Systems Inc. have cut costs, sold off businesses, reworked executive ranks and revamped their offerings since the tech implosion started in 2000.

Some local chip startups, including Ditrans Inc. and Valence Semiconductor Inc., both of Irvine, closed their doors in the past year.

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