Fast processors are picky eaters. They need large currents at low, exact voltages, and they need it to change in a blink when the workload does. Volterra, started by engineers trained at Berkeley, designed the integrated voltage regulators that handled that job. Its chips sat inside gear from Cisco, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and NEC. About 90 percent of its revenue came from outside the United States, where most of those systems were built.

Born in Berkeley

The company was incorporated in August 1996 as Berkeley Integrated Technologies and took the name Volterra in 1997. Its co-founders included Anthony Stratakos, who became chief technology officer, Craig Teuscher, who ran sales, and Greg Hildebrand, who became chief financial officer. The bet was that power delivery, long built from separate parts, could be squeezed into smarter chips. A handful of large customers supplied most of its early revenue.

Maxim Takes Charge

Volterra priced its IPO at $8 a share in July 2004 and listed on Nasdaq as VLTR. Demand from servers and data centers grew, and the company became one of the specialists in power for high-end processors. In August 2013 Maxim Integrated launched a tender offer for Volterra at $23 a share in cash. The deal closed that October, and Volterra became part of Maxim.

Cover: San Gimignano, Piazza Cavour cis della cisterna, Unknown. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a Tuscan hill town (Volterra, the Tuscan city).