 | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Semiconductors |
| Founded | 1996 in Carlsbad, California |
| Defunct | April 3, 2009 |
| Fate | Acquired by Exar Corporation |
Hifn (styled Hi/fn) was a semiconductor manufacturer founded in Carlsbad, California, in 1996 as a corporate spin-off from Stac Electronics. [1] The company was later headquartered in Los Gatos, California, and had offices in North America, Europe and Asia. It designed and sold security processors. [2] It was acquired by Exar Corporation in 2009.
Hifn was founded in 1996 as a spin-out of the semiconductor company Stac, Inc. It held its initial public offering in December 1998. The company's stock was traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol HIFN. [3]
In 1998, Hifn became the first company to offer a processor with integrated encryption and compression, following this in 1999 with the fastest security processor for VPNs.
In 2000, Hifn announced an "Intelligent Packet Processor": a security co-processor capable of not only performing raw algorithm processing, but also modifying the complete packet, allowing their processors to transform an IP packet into an IPSec packet in a single pass in the security processor, with only the policy and IPsec stack being required on the host CPU.
In 2001, the company announced a security processor featuring the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm.
In 2004 they followed on from their packet processor with an IPsec protocol processor, capable of performing IPsec and Internet Key Exchange processing with no CPU intervention. They also adapted this processor for the storage area network market, for applications such as iSCSI.
A secondary offering was priced on April 12, 2004. [4]
Hifn also offered security processors for secure VoIP and WiMax applications, and marketed them for "application-aware" flow classifiers and search engines.
In earlier 2004, Hifn acquired part of IBM Network Processor assets in addition to PowerNP's intellectual property license. Hifn became the sole vendor of PowerNP (IBM code: Rainier) to some telecom/datacom equipment manufacturers.[ which? ]
On April 3, 2009, semiconductor manufacturer Exar Corporation closed the acquisition of Hifn. The transaction included stock and about $67 million in cash. [5] [6] [7]
Hifn held the patents for the Lempel–Ziv–Stac and Microsoft Point-to-Point Compression compression algorithms. [1]
In computing, Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a secure network protocol suite that authenticates and encrypts packets of data to provide secure encrypted communication between two computers over an Internet Protocol network. It is used in virtual private networks (VPNs).
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, refers to a set of technologies used for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as data packets, facilitating various methods of voice communication, including traditional applications like Skype, Microsoft Teams, Google Voice, and VoIP phones. Regular telephones can also be used for VoIP by connecting them to the Internet via analog telephone adapters (ATAs), which convert traditional telephone signals into digital data packets that can be transmitted over IP networks.
Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted or need to be isolated.
In computing, Internet Key Exchange is the protocol used to set up a security association (SA) in the IPsec protocol suite. IKE builds upon the Oakley protocol and ISAKMP. IKE uses X.509 certificates for authentication ‒ either pre-shared or distributed using DNS ‒ and a Diffie–Hellman key exchange to set up a shared session secret from which cryptographic keys are derived. In addition, a security policy for every peer which will connect must be manually maintained.
In computer networking, Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) is a tunneling protocol used to support virtual private networks (VPNs) or as part of the delivery of services by ISPs. It uses encryption ('hiding') only for its own control messages, and does not provide any encryption or confidentiality of content by itself. Rather, it provides a tunnel for Layer 2, and the tunnel itself may be passed over a Layer 3 encryption protocol such as IPsec.
Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol (ISAKMP) is a protocol defined by RFC 2408 for establishing security association (SA) and cryptographic keys in an Internet environment. ISAKMP only provides a framework for authentication and key exchange and is designed to be key exchange independent; protocols such as Internet Key Exchange (IKE) and Kerberized Internet Negotiation of Keys (KINK) provide authenticated keying material for use with ISAKMP. For example: IKE describes a protocol using part of Oakley and part of SKEME in conjunction with ISAKMP to obtain authenticated keying material for use with ISAKMP, and for other security associations such as AH and ESP for the IETF IPsec DOI.
Stac Electronics, originally incorporated as State of the Art Consulting and later shortened to Stac, Inc., was a technology company founded in 1983. It is known primarily for its Lempel–Ziv–Stac lossless compression algorithm and Stacker disk compression utility for compressing data for storage.
Conexant Systems, Inc. was an American-based software developer and fabless semiconductor company that developed technology for voice and audio processing, imaging and modems. The company began as a division of Rockwell International, before being spun off as a public company. Conexant itself then spun off several business units, creating independent public companies which included Skyworks Solutions and Mindspeed Technologies.
Network address translation traversal is a computer networking technique of establishing and maintaining Internet Protocol connections across gateways that implement network address translation (NAT).
Maxim Integrated Products, Inc., was an American semiconductor company that designed, manufactured, and sold analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits for the automotive, industrial, communications, consumer, and computing markets. Maxim's product portfolio included power and battery management ICs, sensors, analog ICs, interface ICs, communications solutions, digital ICs, embedded security, and microcontrollers. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, and has design centers, manufacturing facilities, and sales offices worldwide. In 2021, the company was acquired by Analog Devices.
A High Assurance Internet Protocol Encryptor (HAIPE) is a Type 1 encryption device that complies with the National Security Agency's HAIPE IS. The cryptography used is Suite A and Suite B, also specified by the NSA as part of the Cryptographic Modernization Program. HAIPE IS is based on IPsec with additional restrictions and enhancements. One of these enhancements includes the ability to encrypt multicast data using a "preplaced key". This requires loading the same key on all HAIPE devices that will participate in the multicast session in advance of data transmission. A HAIPE is typically a secure gateway that allows two enclaves to exchange data over an untrusted or lower-classification network.
A VoIP VPN combines voice over IP and virtual private network technologies to offer a method for delivering secure voice. Because VoIP transmits digitized voice as a stream of data, the VoIP VPN solution accomplishes voice encryption quite simply, applying standard data-encryption mechanisms inherently available in the collection of protocols used to implement a VPN.
Applied Micro Circuits Corporation was a fabless semiconductor company designing network and embedded Power ISA, and server processor ARM, optical transport and storage products.
Microsoft Point-to-Point Compression is a streaming data compression algorithm based on an implementation of Lempel–Ziv using a sliding window buffer. According to Hifn's IP statement, MPPC was patent-encumbered.
Tarari is a company that spun out of Intel in 2002. It has created a range of re-programmable silicon based on Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA and ASICs that offload and accelerate really complex algorithms such as XML Parsing, scanning for Computer viruses, email spam and intruders in Intrusion-prevention systems and Unified threat management appliances. As well as inspecting content its Content Processors can also transform content and they are used for XML transformation XSLT, compression, encryption as well as HD Video encoding for WMV and VC-1 formats.
In computing, Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 introduced in 2007/2008 a new networking stack named Next Generation TCP/IP stack, to improve on the previous stack in several ways. The stack includes native implementation of IPv6, as well as a complete overhaul of IPv4. The new TCP/IP stack uses a new method to store configuration settings that enables more dynamic control and does not require a computer restart after a change in settings. The new stack, implemented as a dual-stack model, depends on a strong host-model and features an infrastructure to enable more modular components that one can dynamically insert and remove.
The Automotive Network Exchange (ANX), a large private extranet that connects automotive suppliers to automotive manufacturers. Founded in 1995 by Automotive Industry Action Group, ANX since 1999 has been owned and operated by ANXeBusiness Corp., formerly a division of Leidos/SAIC but acquired in 2006 by One Equity Partners. Since 2006, ANX has expanded into other markets and now provides managed security, compliance assurance, and connectivity services to businesses in the healthcare and retail as well as automotive sectors.
LSI Logic Corporation, was an American company founded in Santa Clara, California, was a pioneer in the ASIC and EDA industries. It evolved over time to design and sell semiconductors and software that accelerated storage and networking in data centers, mobile networks and client computing.
In digital communications networks, packet processing refers to the wide variety of algorithms that are applied to a packet of data or information as it moves through the various network elements of a communications network. With the increased performance of network interfaces, there is a corresponding need for faster packet processing.
Exar Corporation was an American semiconductor manufacturer active from 1971 to 2017 as a subsidiary of the Japanese firm Rohm. It was acquired by MaxLinear in May 2017 and maintained as a wholly owned subsidiary for a short while.