Lattice Semiconductor vs NVIDIA: Founders, CEOs and History

Company facts

Founders

CEOs and their tenures

Timeline: Lattice Semiconductor and NVIDIA side by side

1. 1983Lattice Semiconductor

   Lattice Founded

   C. Norman Winningstad, Rahul Sud, and Ray Capece found Lattice in Oregon to make programmable logic devices.

2. 1989Lattice Semiconductor

   Initial Public Offering

   After a 1987 Chapter 11 reorganization, Lattice completes its initial public offering.

3. 1993NVIDIA

   Founding in Santa Clara

   Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem founded NVIDIA on April 5, 1993, with a focus on 3D graphics for gaming and multimedia. The founding set the company on a parallel-processing path long before AI infrastructure became the main market.

4. 1999NVIDIA

   GPU Category Defined

   NVIDIA introduced the graphics processing unit concept in 1999. The milestone mattered because it framed graphics hardware as a specialized processor, a technical idea that later carried into accelerated computing and AI workloads.

5. 2002Lattice Semiconductor

   Agere FPGA Business Acquired

   Lattice bought the FPGA business of Agere Systems in 2002.

6. 2006NVIDIA

   CUDA Opens GPUs to General Computing

   CUDA opened GPU parallel processing to scientists, researchers, and developers outside graphics. It became the software foundation that made NVIDIA hardware useful for machine learning, simulation, and other compute-heavy workloads.

7. 2011Lattice Semiconductor

   SiliconBlue Acquisition

   Lattice acquires SiliconBlue Technologies for about $62 million, adding the low-power iCE40 FPGA line.

8. 2012NVIDIA

   AlexNet Shows GPU Value for Deep Learning

   The AlexNet breakthrough used NVIDIA GPUs to win the ImageNet competition. The event helped convince researchers and engineers that GPUs could accelerate neural-network training at a scale CPUs could not match.

9. 2015Lattice Semiconductor

   Silicon Image Acquired

   Lattice bought Silicon Image in 2015 for about $600 million.

10. 2016NVIDIA

    DGX-1 AI Supercomputer

    Nvidia introduced the DGX-1 deep-learning supercomputer in 2016, its first system built specifically for artificial intelligence.

11. 2017Lattice Semiconductor

    Canyon Bridge Deal Blocked

    President Trump blocked the sale of Lattice to the China-backed fund Canyon Bridge in September 2017.

12. 2018Lattice Semiconductor

    Jim Anderson Becomes CEO

    Jim Anderson became chief executive of Lattice in September 2018.

13. 2018NVIDIA

    RTX Brings Real-Time Ray Tracing to Graphics

    NVIDIA RTX brought real-time ray tracing into the company's graphics roadmap. The product line kept gaming and professional visualization tied to AI-enhanced rendering while Data Center was becoming more important.

14. 2020NVIDIA

    Mellanox Acquisition Adds Networking

    NVIDIA completed the Mellanox acquisition for about $7 billion. The deal mattered because large AI and high-performance-computing clusters depend on fast networking between accelerators, not only on individual GPU speed.

15. 2021Lattice Semiconductor

    Acquired Mirametrix

    Lattice Semiconductor acquired Mirametrix. Lattice acquired Mirametrix, a Montreal computer-vision software company, to add AI software for presence detection and attention sensing.

16. 2022NVIDIA

    Arm Acquisition Terminated

    NVIDIA and SoftBank terminated the proposed Arm acquisition because of significant regulatory challenges. The failed deal showed how closely governments watch control points in semiconductor architecture.

17. 2022NVIDIA

    Hopper H100 Announced

    Nvidia announced the Hopper-architecture H100 data-center GPU in March 2022.

18. 2023NVIDIA

    Grace CPU Enters Data Center Roadmap

    NVIDIA introduced its first data-center CPU, Grace, for large-scale AI and high-performance computing. The milestone expanded the platform from GPUs and networking into CPU-GPU system design.

19. 2024Lattice Semiconductor

    Ford Tamer Becomes CEO

    Ford Tamer becomes CEO in September 2024 after Jim Anderson left to lead Coherent.

20. 2024NVIDIA

    Blackwell Architecture Launched

    NVIDIA launched Blackwell as a data-center-scale architecture combining GPUs, CPUs, DPUs, interconnects, switch chips, systems, and networking adapters. The architecture became central to FY2026 Data Center demand.

21. 2025Lattice Semiconductor

    FY2025 Revenue of $523.3M

    Lattice reports $523.3 million in revenue, $3.1 million in GAAP net income, and 1,800 employees as an industrial inventory correction eases.

22. 2026Lattice Semiconductor

    AMI Acquisition Completed

    Announced on May 4 and closed on July 27, 2026, the $1.65 billion AMI deal adds server firmware and management software to Lattice's FPGA business.

23. 2026Lattice Semiconductor

    Record Q2 Revenue of $201.1M

    Q2 2026 revenue rises 62% year over year to $201.1 million on data center and AI demand.

24. 2026NVIDIA

    $215.9B FY2026 Revenue

    NVIDIA reported $215.9 billion of FY2026 revenue, $193.7 billion of Data Center revenue, and $120.1 billion of net income. The result showed how far AI infrastructure had moved the company beyond its original PC graphics market.

Acquisitions

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