Company Pedigree
| Ascendant Companies | Descendent Companies | ||
| Company | Comments | Company | Comments |
| SGS | SGS merged with another Italian company, Ates, to form SGS-Ates in 1971 | SGS Microelettronic | In 1985, SGS-Ates was renamed to SGS Microelettronic |
| Ates | Ates merged with another Italian company, SGS, to form SGS-Ates in 1971 | SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics | SGS Microelettronic merged with Thomson in June of 1987 to create SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics |
| Mostek | United Technologies bought Mostek in 1980, then sold Mostek to SGS-Ates in 1981. The Mostek brand used until 1985. | ||
Company Overview
SGS was merged with Ates by the Italian government. Control of SGS was removed from Olivetti and the whole new corporation SGS-Ates was controlled by STET (Società Finanziara Telefonica), which already controlled Ates.
The merged SGS-Ates company focused on linear IC’s for much of the 70’s. In 1979 SGS-Ates licensed the Z80 from Zilog and produced a complete family of pin-compatible Z80 chips. In 1982, SGS developed a line of Zilog Z8000 compatible chips.
In the 1981, SGS-Ates bought the troubled Mostek from United Technologies. This added addition market share of Z80 chips and added Mostek’s Fairchild F8 licenses.
SGS never developed any unique designs and as competitive commodity pressures increased, SGS merged with the French company Thomson.