National Reviving Fairchild Name

Fairchild, a historic name in the computer chip industry, is coming back.

National Semiconductor Corp. will spin off its memory and logic chip operations into an independent company called Fairchild Semiconductor. It took the first step Thursday by putting the operations into a new division and hiring investment bankers to help with the spin-off.

The operations are less profitable and have less growth potential than National’s main business, making so-called “mixed signal” chips that convert analog and digital signals.

National’s sales and profits have fallen recently. New Chief Executive Brian Halla plans to revive them by eliminating the lower-margin operation and investing in design and manufacturing to build better products in the future. He implemented a similar strategy to revive LSI Logic Corp.

The spin-off resurrects a historic name in Silicon Valley. The original Fairchild Semiconductor was formed in 1958 as a unit of Fairchild Camera and Instrument. It gave birth to the first computer chip that could be mass produced and by the mid-1960s was Fairchild Camera’s biggest operation.