Every packet crossing the internet has to be looked up against a table before a router knows where to send it. NetLogic Microsystems, from Mountain View, made the chips that did those lookups at full speed. Its network search processors sat inside the switches and routers of the big equipment makers. When NetLogic went public in July 2004, the telecom bust was ending, and traffic from broadband and mobile data was starting to climb again.

Searching at Line Speed

NetLogic began as a California limited liability company and incorporated in Delaware in 2000. Its chips held large tables of addresses and rules and could match a packet against all of them in a single step. That let networking gear classify traffic, enforce security rules and route packets without slowing down. NetLogic sold to a small number of large equipment makers, so each design win mattered a great deal.

Broadcom's Fifty Dollars

NetLogic priced its IPO at $12 a share in July 2004 on Nasdaq. It grew by adding product lines, including multicore processors for networking gear when it bought RMI in 2009. In September 2011 Broadcom agreed to buy NetLogic for $50 a share, a 57 percent premium over its last close. The deal was valued at about $3.7 billion and closed in February 2012.

Cover: Chinese and Tartar Boys Quarreling over a Game of Go, Katsushika Hokusai. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a game of Go (pure logic).