computer science

Lattice Semiconductor

Lattice Semiconductor is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lattice Semiconductor rather than just read about it. In short: Lattice Semiconductor Corporation is an American semiconductor company specializing in the design and manufacturing of low-power field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Headquartered in the Silicon Forest area of Hillsboro, Oregon, the company also has operations in San Jose, California, Shanghai, Manila, Penang, Singapore and Pune.

Key takeaways

Lattice Semiconductor belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lattice Semiconductor to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lattice Semiconductor from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Lattice Semiconductor Corporation is an American semiconductor company specializing in the design and manufacturing of low-power field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Headquartered in the Silicon Forest area of Hillsboro, Oregon, the company also has operations in San Jose, California, Shanghai, Manila, Penang, Singapore and Pune. Lattice Semiconductor has more than 1,000 employees and an annual revenue of more than $660 million as of 2022. The company was founded in 1983 and went public in 1989. It is traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the symbol LSCC.

History

Founding and early growth Lattice was founded on April 3, 1983, by C. Norman Winningstad, Rahul Sud, and Ray Capece, with investment from Winningstad, Harry Merlo, Tom Moyer, and John Piacentini. Lattice was incorporated in Oregon in 1983 and reincorporated in Delaware in 1985. Co-founder Sud left as president in December 1986, and Winningstad left in 1991 as chairman of the board. Early struggles led to chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in July 1987. The company emerged from bankruptcy after 62 days and moved from its headquarters in an unincorporated area near Beaverton to a smaller building in Hillsboro, Oregon. Over the next year, the company shrank from 140 to 64 employees but posted record revenues. Cyrus Tsui became the company's chief executive officer in 1988. On November 9, 1989, Lattice became a publicly traded company when its shares were listed on the NASDAQ after an initial public offering. The initial share price was $6, and raised almost $14 million for the company. In July 1990, a second stock offering of nearly 1.5 million new shares raised $22.6 million at $16.25 per share. In 1995, the company attempted to assert trademark rights in the term Silicon Forest beyond the use of its trademark for the use in semiconductor devices. It had registered the mark in 1985, but later conceded it could not prevent the usage of the term as a noun. Forbes ranked the company as their 162nd best small company in the United States in 1996, and Lattice began to double the size of its Hillsboro headquarters. In 2000, annual revenues topped $560 million with profits of $160 million. Its stock price reached an all-time high of $41.34, adjusted for splits. For the next five years, however, the company recorded no annual profit.

Acquisitions and leadership changes

On March 19, 2001, Lattice acquired Integrated Intellectual Property, Inc. (I2P), a semiconductor intellectual property (IP) company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. This move strengthened Lattice's internal intellectual property development programs and marked I2P's successful exit as one of the early pure-play semiconductor IP firms of the dot-com era. Lattice purchased Agere Corporation's FPGA division in 2002. In 2004, the company settled charges with the United States government that it had illegally exported certain technologies to China, paying a fine of $560,000. In 2005, Tsui was replaced as CEO by Steve Skaggs and the company laid off employees for the first time. In fiscal year 2006, Lattice posted a profit of $3.1 million on revenues of $245.5 million, the first annual profit since 2000. In June 2008, Bruno Guilmart was named as chief executive officer of the company, replacing Steve Skaggs. For fiscal year 2008, Lattice had a loss of $32 million on annual revenues of $222.3 million. In 2009, the company began moving all of its warehouse operations for parts from Oregon to Singapore. Through July 2009, the company had lost money for ten straight quarters, and had its first profitable quarter in three years during the fourth quarter of 2009. Bruno Guilmart left the company in August 2010, and Darin Billerbeck, former Zilog CEO, who had just sold Zilog in the previous year, was named the new CEO in October of that year, starting in November. The company reported 2011 revenue of $318 million. Lattice started a stock buy-back program in 2010 that continued into 2012 that would total about $35 million if fully implemented. In 2011, the company was ranked third among the world's makers of field programmable gate array (FPGA) devices and second for CPLDs & SPLDs. On December 9, 2011, Lattice announced it was acquiring SiliconBlue for $63.2 million in cash. Lattice announced in July 2012 a foundry agreement with United Microelectronics Corporation. Lattice returned to profitability in 2013 with a profit of $22.3 million on $332.5 million in revenues. The company acquired Silicon Image Inc. for $606 million in March 2015 and moved company headquarters to downtown Portland.

Activity since 2016 In April 2016, Tsinghua Holdings said in a U.S. filing that it accumulated a roughly 6 percent stake in Lattice Semiconductor through share purchased on the open market. In November 2016, Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, a private equity firm backed by China Reform Holdings Corporation announced a definitive agreement to acquire all of Lattice's shares. The purchase of Lattice by Canyon Bridge was in September 2017 blocked by US President Donald Trump based on the recommendation of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States on national security grounds under the Exon–Florio Amendment. The company re-located its headquarters back to its Hillsboro campus in 2019. Activist investor Lion Point Capital purchased a six percent stake in Lattice in February 2018. The next month the company filled three new seats on its board with independent directors supported by Lion Point. That same year, Lattice replaced several members of its leadership team, including bringing in a new president and CEO, Jim Anderson, who previously worked at Advanced Micro Devices. Under the new leadership, Lattice shifted the company's focus entirely to low-power FPGAs. Lattice acquired computer vision software company Mirametrix in November 2021. Jim Anderson left Lattice in June 2024, at which time Lattice Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Esam Elashmawi was appointed Interim CEO. On September 16, 2024, Lattice named Ford Tamer as CEO. On May 5, 2026, Lattice announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire American Megatrends (AMI), a provider of platform firmware and infrastructure manageability, for $1.65 billion in a combination of cash and stock.

Products

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Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lattice Semiconductor

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lattice Semiconductor claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lattice Semiconductor before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lattice Semiconductor ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lattice Semiconductor

In research: Lattice Semiconductor appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lattice Semiconductor in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lattice Semiconductor is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1980s initial public offerings, 1983 establishments in Oregon, 1989 initial public offerings, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lattice Semiconductor outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lattice Semiconductor in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lattice Semiconductor means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lattice Semiconductor out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lattice Semiconductor in simple terms?

Why does Lattice Semiconductor matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lattice Semiconductor?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lattice Semiconductor.