Founder returns to celebrate LI chip maker's 40th

He was shaking hands, signing autographs and smiling for the cameras. Paul Richman, 68, had come home. "Home" is Standard Microsystems Corp. of Hauppauge, Long Island's largest manufacturer of computer chips.

It's the company that Richman helped found in 1971 on 10 $100 bills from legendary Long Island venture capitalist Herman Fialkov, and that is now a global chip supplier with annual sales of $400 million and 1,000 employees worldwide, including 300 locally.

SMSC celebrated its 40th anniversary Tuesday, with an appearance by Richman, a semiconductor physicist and pioneer in the chip industry, who retired as the company's chief executive a decade ago.

Speaking to 200 SMSC employees in a large meeting room at the company headquarters, he said he had never wanted to head the company, telling Fialkov in 1971 he had "no business training" and his heart was in the science and technology. But Fialkov told him no more money would be invested in SMSC unless Richman agreed to run it.

"The company grew and grew and grew," Richman told the employees. "It was a very young company."

Among those at the celebration was Christine King, who took the reigns as chief executive in October 2008, just as the nation slid into the worst recession in decades. "It gave us a very objective view of what had to happen," King said. Basically, that amounted to cost cutting. Even now, King said, "the economy is very challenging."

Richman brought to SMSC pioneering work in computer chips. He devised a process that makes chips smaller by moving transistors closer together and at the same time achieves higher speeds of operation. That makes computers and other electronic products move faster and more efficiently.

Richman started SMSC as an R&D operation but made products in data communications and computer peripherals. He and his family moved to Japan in 1987 for two years to help start a joint venture that is now wholly owned by SMSC and is called Standard Microsystems Japan.

Today the company makes chips for PCs, smart phones and automobile entertainment systems. Competition is fierce, and the economy, while improving, is still not what it was before 2008. Suji De Silva, who follows the chip industry for San Francisco-based ThinkEquity, an investment research firm, is optimistic about SMSC's future: "It's a new corporation [under King]. They are positioning themselves strongly."

Did Richman ever think SMSC would grow so big? "The answer is, absolutely not," he said, shaking his head and looking about the room crowded with people, many not yet born when SMSC got started.