Hifn is a semiconductor manufacturer founded in 1996 as a spin-off from Stac Electronics. The company is headquartered in Los Gatos, California, and has offices in North America, Europe and Asia. It is active in the market of security processors. Following the initial public offering in 1998, the company's stock was formerly traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol HIFN
Hifn holds the patents for the LZS and MPPC compression algorithms.
Hifn was the first company to offer a processor with integrated encryption and compression in 1998, and followed this in 1999 with the world's fastest security processor for VPNs.
In 2000, Hifn invented an Intelligent Packet Processor - a security co-processor capable of not just performing raw algorithm processing, but of 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.
They were the first to offer a security processor featuring the new AES algorithm in 2001.
In 2004 they followed on from their Packet Processor with a complete IPSec protocol processor - an Inline processor capable of performing the entire IPSec and IKE processing with no CPU intervention required. They also adapted this processor for the SAN market, for applications such as iSCSI.
Hifn also offers security processors for Secure VoIP and WiMax applications, and its technology innovator, offering technologies 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. Since then Hifn became the sole vendor of PowerNP (IBM code: Rainier) to a couple of telecom/datacom equipment industrial players.
On April 3, 2009, Exar Corporation (a semiconductor manufacturer) closed the acquisition of hi/fn, inc. The transaction was a stock+cash deal.