Company plunks down $200 million for System General In the second big deal by a U.S. company to buy a Taiwanese chip maker in recent months, Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. on Tuesday launched a US$200 million bid to buy System General Corp.The two companies specialize in chips that manage power in digital devices, but Fairchild has been around far longer. Fairchild, of South Portland, Maine, was born from the ideas and investment of several chip titans, including Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, both of Intel Corp. fame, and was incorporated in 1957. System General, of Taipei, opened in 1983, focusing on power management chips from the start.In a statement, Fairchild cited System General’s strong power products and sales in China and Taiwan as key reasons for its interest in the company. All 250 employees of System General will join Fairchild if the deal goes through. Fairchild does not expect the purchase to add much to its sales in 2007, it said.The proposed deal follows on the heels of a high profile offer made for the world’s largest chip assembly company, Taiwan’s Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE), in November.U.S. private equity firm, The Carlyle Group, is leading a consortium of investors in a possible US$5.5 billion deal to buy ASE. The companies are still in talks over a possible deal, but a formal offer has not yet been made. The worldwide chip industry has been gripped by buy-out fever. Last year, another Carlyle-led group agreed to pay $17.6 billion for Freescale Semiconductor Inc., while Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV sold a majority stake in its chip unit to another group for around US$10.6 billion.In addition, microprocessor giant Advanced Micro Devices Inc. bought graphics chip maker ATI Technologies Inc., and graphics chip processor maker Nvidia Corp. said it plans to purchase digital music chip maker PortalPlayer Inc. Technology Industry