Atheros

Qualcomm Atheros

Formerly called	Atheros Communications T-Span Systems
Type	Subsidiary
Founded	May 1998
Founder	Teresa H. Meng, Chik Patrick Yue
Headquarters	San Jose, California, USA
Products	Ethernet, WLAN, Bluetooth, GPS, powerline communications, hybrid wired/wireless, location
Parent	Qualcomm
Website	www.qca.qualcomm.com

Qualcomm Atheros is a developer of semiconductors for network communications, particularly wireless chipsets. Founded under the name T-Span Systems in 1998 by experts in signal processing and VLSI design from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley and private industry. The company was renamed Atheros Communications in 2000 and it completed an initial public offering in February 2004 trading on NASDAQ under the symbol ATHR.

On January 5, 2011, it was announced that Qualcomm had agreed to a takeover of the company for a valuation of US$3.7 billion. When the acquisition was completed on May 24, 2011, Atheros became a subsidiary of Qualcomm operating under the name Qualcomm Atheros.

Qualcomm Atheros chipsets for the IEEE 802.11 standard of wireless networking are used by over 30 different wireless device manufacturers.

T-Span Systems was co-founded in 1998 by Teresa Meng, professor of engineering at Stanford University and Chik Patrick Yue, and John L. Hennessy, provost at the time and then president of Stanford University through 2016.

The company's first office was a converted house on Encina Avenue, Palo Alto, adjacent to a car wash and Town & Country Village.

In September 1999, the company moved to an office at 3145 Porter Drive, Building A, Palo Alto.

In 2000, T-Span Systems was renamed Atheros Communications and the company moved to a larger office at 529 Almanor Avenue, Sunnyvale. Atheros publicly demonstrated its inaugural chipset, the world's first WLAN implemented in CMOS technology and the industry's first high-speed 802.11a 5 GHz solution.

In 2002, Atheros launched the first dual-band wireless solution, the AR5001X 802.11a/b.

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