At the back end of the '60s a new chip company set out to make MOS memories and microprocessors. It brought out the industry standard 16K DRAM, and led the memory market at the 16k and 64k generations.
At the back end of the 70s, the company was bought for $380 million by a big company which wanted to get into semiconductors.
On top of the acquisition cost, the big company shelled out a billion dollars in new factories, capital equipment and to cover the losses of the 1981 memory price slump.
Then the big company found that its new acquisition could not make a 256K DRAM and the Japanese got a product to market a full year ahead of them.
With their IC operation costing them a million dollars a day, the big company pulled out and sold the IC business for $71 million.
MORAL: Don't get into what you don't understand
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