Linear Technology Corporation is 30 years old today. Founded by Bob Widlar, Bob Swanson and Bob Dobkin on Sept 26th 1981 as a spin-out from National Semiconductor, it has stayed true to its roots of making analogue ICs.
LTC had the world’s most famous analogue applications engineer in Jim Williams who sadly died earlier this year.
The achievements of which the company is most proud are:
1982 Industry standard precision op amps
1986 Highest stability precision voltage reference
1986 LT1070 – First 5A single chip easy-to-use switching regulator
1989 First CMOS low power RS485 chip (LTC485)
1992 Hot Swap™ family
1993 Burst Mode® DC/DC converters
1999 High efficiency, multiphase synchronous switching regulators
2001 Power over Ethernet (PoE) controllers
2002 First buck-boost regulators
2005 High linearity active mixers with on-chip transformer
2005 First high speed 16-Bit ADC with 100dB SFDR
2006 µModule® DC/DC converters
2007 LT3080 – First single resistor adjustable linear regulator
2008 First precision battery monitor device for hybrid/electric vehicles
2009 Digital power management monitors & controllers
2010 Energy harvesting 20mV input boost/power manager
2011 First 18-Bit, 1Msps SAR ADC with 102dB SNR
