|
|
|
 |
home | about | pictures | reference | trade | links |
Updated 09-09-2005 w/ 10 companies
A brief history of almost every company that made/makes processors and/or
microcontrollers.
Founding date and Company Founder as well as history of products and current
state.
Many of these companies are no longer in business or have been bought by others
which makes this information hard to find. This information is accurate to
the best of my
knowledge. If you find an error please let me know. (Note not all links work,
as many of these companies have went out of business)
|
|
|
| Founded: 1969 (Jerry Sanders) History: AMD has made many products including CPUs, MCUs, memory. They were a second source to Intel (by agreement) form 1982-1992. AMD's biggest achievements occurred after they bought NexGen in 1995. This led to the AMD K6 CPU line and the K7. Current: AMD now is a world leader in CPUs and Flash Memory Production. They continue to also make embedded products such as the 188 and ElanSC 486. They also own the Geode. Interesting products: AM9300 - First product (shift register) 9512 / 9511 FPUs 5x86 133 (Fastest 486 - can run at 160MHz) AMD K6 K6-2 and K6-3 AMD K7 AMD64 (64 bit x86) |
|
|
History: Highly successful in the 1970s in the MOSFET industry. Second sourced the Motorola 6800 CPU and had their own 6501 bit-slice device. Current: Owned by Francisco Partners & CVC Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1984 (Gust & George Perlegos) History: Mainly made EPROMs early on and 8051 enhanced MCUs. Fought and WON one of the many Intel EPROM lawsuits of the 1980's Current: Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry’s broadest intellectual property (IP) portfolios, Atmel provides electronics systems manufacturers with complete system solutions. This enables its customers to lead the markets they serve with electronic products that are smaller, smarter, more cost-effective and versatile than ever before. Focused on consumer, industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets, Atmel ICs can be found Everywhere You Are Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1988 (Alexandre Balkanski) History: Began by making video and RISC processors. Leader in MPEG decoders. Current: Owned by LSI Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1985 (Gordon Campbell) History: Producer of 387 and 387 chips. Moved into chipsets and mobile graphics solutions in the 90's. Sold to Intel in 1997 Current: Owned by Intel Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1986 (Simon C. Huang) History: Makers of 6502 clones. Also made a 16 bit 65816. Current: Makes USB chips and IDE controllers |
|
|
History: Spun off from AMD. Makers of FPGAs, Memory etc. Also has foundry services that were used to make Sun Sparc CPUs Current: Making SRAM etc Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Founded by ex-TI staff. Developed 287 and 387 chips. Also made 486 and Pentium equivalents. All design was in-house. Used TI, ST, and IBM, fabs. Eventually sold to NS in 1997 and then to VIA in 2000. Current: Owned by VIA |
|
| Founded: 1984 (C. Vincent Prothro) History: Makers of instrumentation sensors and AD components. Also makes one of the fastest MCS51 MCUs at 40MHz Current: MCS51, temp sensors ADCs - Owned by Maxim Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: (Various East German Compainies) History: East Germany was a powerhouse of Soviet CPU design. They cloned mst Intel chips from the 8008 up. Current: Most companies have been bought or disbanded X-FAB is one that still exists out of the former FWE Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Makers of VAX computers and other mainframes. Makers of the DEC Alpha 21x64 CPUs. Bought by Compaq in 1999. Current: Owned by HP Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Largely unsuccessful. Made one CPU Current: Sold to NEC in 1978 Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1957 (Sheridan Fairchild and others) History: Started by the 'traitorous eight' including Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce. Fairchild spun off into the most famous CPU companies including AMD, Intel, National, and Intersil. Gordon Moore, Jerry Sanders, Federico Faggin and others all started at Fairchild. Current: Owned by Intersil Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Partnership between Fuji Electric and Seimens. Second sourced many Intel chips. Fabs others CPUs as well. Current: Makes almost everything (cars, etc) Interesting products: |
|
| Founded: 1926 (Sigurd Odegard) History: Mainly a telecom company. Second sourced/branded some CPUs in the 80s. Current: Still a telecom Company Interesting products: |
|
|
History: Makes telecom chips Current: Telecom Interesting products: |
|
| Founded: 1895 (Alfred & Charles G. Harris) History: Invented automatic feed printing presses. In the 1960s delved into electronics (Radiation Inc). Instrumental in space systems. Harris Corp name came in 1974. Made many rad-hard chips for the military. Current: Commo company. Sold Semiconductor divisions to Intersil and TI Interesting products: |
|
| Founded: 1910 (Namihei Odaira) History: Started as electronics repair shop. Second sourced many Motorola chips. Current: Consumer Electronics and MCUs as well as heavy equipment. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1939 (Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard) History: Developed test instruments for the sound industry. Made custom chips for many. PA-RISC series of server chips. Fabbed FPU's for ULSI. Current: Leaders in Home PC, Printer, and Server industries. Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Were leading makers of satellites, also second sourced some 1802s. Current: Runs DirectTV Satellite TV. Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Started by making typewriters and census machines, WW2 saw production of rifles ( M1 Carbines ) Led the PC revolution in the early 1980s. During the 70s and 80s IBM made several mainframes. In exchange for fabbing of Cyrix's CPUs IBM got inexpensive rights to make a Cyrix clone. Second sourced some Intel chips as well. IBM also developed the RS6000 CPU (used on Mars now. Also created the PowerPC. Current: Power4 and Power5 sever chips. G5 CPUs for the Mac. Sells notebooks and PCs. Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: SRAM producer as well as RISC CPUs. Delved into the x86 arena with the Winchip and Winchip2 CPUs Made by the centaur design division. Current: SRAM and RISC chips used in network routers. Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Makers of Math co-processors for the 286, 386 and 486. Current: Multimedia Communications chips. Known as 8x8. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1977 (Richard Petritz) History: State sponsored chip company (Britain). Inmos had innovative and unusual ideas based around a processor intended for parallel processing called the transputer. More successful in making SRAM. Sold to SGS Current: Part of STm Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1968 (Bob Noyce & Gordon Moore) History: Founded from ex-fairchild founders. Started by making SRAM and ROMs. Custom made 4004 CPU in 1971. Current: Largest maker of CPUs. Trying to get into the wireless networking field. Interesting Products: |
|
|
|
|
|
History: Founded by ex-Fairchild employee. Makers of the 6100 CPU. Sold to RCA, GE and Harris, then reformed as Intersil. Made extensive logic chips (CD4000 series) and many other semiconductors. Current. Internet infrastructure, communications, power control and satellite communications. Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Makers of the GREEN MATH 387 Current: No longer in business Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1981 (Wilfred J. Corrigan) History: Fabs chips for other companies. Some CPUs (mainly Sparc) but mainly core logics. Current: FCPGAs and logic chips. |
|
|
Current: Owned by Atmel Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1989 (Spun off from GI) History: Developed the PIC Current: PIC MCUs and support chips Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1880 (Yataro Iwasaki) History: Started as a steamboat company and heavy industry. Dissolved in 1946. Reformed in 1954. Makes Microcontrollers (generally Intel clones) Current: Japanese mega-corporation including investing, construction, cars, and chips. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 198? (E German Gov't) History: Produced copies of western (Zilog and Intel mainly) chips in East Germany Current: See DDR Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Intel's first second source supplier. Made 8008 CPUs Current: No longer exists Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1974 (Chuck Peddle, Bill Mensch) History: Made the 6502 series of CPUs as well as calculator chips. Bought in 1976 by Commodore Business Machines (CBM) to avoid a lawsuit by Motorola Current: No longer exists Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1969 (L. J. Sevin from TI) History: Second sourced CPUs for Zilog and Motorola as well as the Fairchild F8. Current: Sold to STm Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Originally Galvin Manf. Changed t=name to Motorola to market a car radio. Motorola Semiconductor began in 1951. Second sourced Intel 8080 and AMD 2901. Made the 68xx and 68k line of CPUs. Second sourced the PowerPC for IBM (to Apple) Current: Makes DSPs and other CPUs based on the 68k (Coldfire) core. As well as PPC products. Also involved in consumer electronics (cell phones etc) CPU dvision has been spun off to Freescale. |
|
|
|
|
| Founded: 1959 (Bernard Rothlein) History: Led by engineers from Fairchild. Made the IMP-16, 32032 and 32016. Second source for the Intel 4004. Made RISC CPUs. Bought and produced the Cyrix line in the late 90s. Current: Makers of extremely small MCUs and analog components Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1884 (John H. Patterson) History: Makers of cash registers and POS terminals. Also had a school for salesman. Made 6502 clones Current: Now a software company Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Nippon Electric Company, Ltd.was established with Western Electric Company of the United States to become the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital. First Japanese company to develop a single chip CPU. The 751. Made many Intel Clones. Also made a higher speed version of the 8086 (V20 and V30). Developed the widely used D7810HG MCU that is used in everything from heavy equipment to sewing machines. Current: Manufacturer of computers, supercomputers, communications equipments, and electronic devices. |
|
|
History: NexGen was a startup funded by Compaq, ASCII,
and Kleiner Perkins (founder was Thampy Thomas); Nick Tredennick hired
and managed the original engineering team; people who followed Nick
included Atiq Raza and Dave Epstein (who led the chip into full production,
1990-1995) The F86 was described at 1989 Compcon and later renamed Nx586,
it required a FP coprocessor Current: No longer in Business Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1912 (Motojiro Shiraishi and Kaichiro Imaizumi) History: NKK (Nippon Kokan KK) is actually the 6th largest steel producer in the world. They are a Japanaese company that has now begun working with computers. Their electronics research center began in 1987. Current: NKK has been rapidly building their chip library with MIPS core. Their CPUs are often found in DSL modems and other network infrastructure. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1977 (Part of OKI Japan) History: OKI has generally made Intel clones or extensions of Intel chips. They also make many other electronic componets Current: OKI still makes MCU/MPUs and other electronics. Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Made military processors based on the 1750 standard for many applications, including the F/a-18 and 707. Current: Makers of Mil-spec MIL-STD-1750 CPU's as well as commercial SRAM. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1991 (Gerard Philips) History: Netherlands based company. Originally built light bulbs and X-ray equipment. Electronics division started in 1965. Made the cassette tape and the CD. Restructured in the 90s to focus on Semiconductors Current: MCUs, discrete, and consumer electronics. Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: Bulgarian company that made clones of western chip and made computers up through the 1980's Current: Disbanded with the breaking of the Soviet Union Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1991 (Tom Riordan)
History: Started by refugees from MIPS. Designs, develops and markets high-performance, cost-effective, market-driven MIPS embedded microprocessor solutions. The company designed and developed the most popular of the 64-bit MIPS microprocessors on the market today including the R4600, R4700, R4650, R4640 and R5000. Current: Bought by PMC-Sierra. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1919 (spun-off from GE)
History: Invented Television. Develops the 1802 for use in the COSMAC computer Current: Makes consumer electronics. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1993 (David Lin)
History: Developed the MP6 low cost low power Socket 7 CPU. Used in set-top boxes etc Current: Still making CPUs as far as I know Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1967 History: Division of Rockwell Int. Developed the compact QUIP package. Mainly made clones of 6502s and Motorola products. Spun off as Connexant in 1999 Current: Connexant now makes many chips for commo and multimedia. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1938 History: South Korean Mega-corporation. Built the Petronas towers. Tried to make cars. Made memory and fabbed the Alpha processor for DEC. Current: Mainly making DRAM etc now Interesting Products: |
|
|
History: SCL entered into a technical collaboration with American Microsystems Inc. USA and in 1984 commenced commercial production in 5 micron CMOS technology. Through intensive in-house R&D efforts SCL developed and productionised the next generation 3 micron, 2 micron, 1.2 micron, 0.8 micron as well as certain specialized technologies such as EEPROM. The company has over the years developed and manufactured a number of key VLSIs for the Telecom and Industrial sectors. Current: ASIC and MEMs prodicts, as well as Foundry services Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1950 (Olivetti & Telettra)
History: Delved into the field of transistors. Federico Faggin started his career there. Fairchild invested in SGS in the 1960s. In the 70s SGS struggled. They made Z80 clones. Probably due to Faggins past with them. Eventually merged with Thomson to form STm Current: Part of STM Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1912 (Tokuji Hayakawa)
History: Began as a metal works. Invented the mechanical pencil. After 1923 earthquake began making radios. Mainly made/makes home appliances but did second source Z80 chips and others. Started its semiconductor business in 1970. Current: Still making MCUs and appliances Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1847 (Werner von Siemens)
History: Began as a telegraph company. Second sourced many Intel chips. Began making computers in the 1950s. Semi. division spun off as Infineon. Current: Still making MCUs and memory Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1961 (Founded
by four of original 8 founders of Fairchild)
History: Bought by Phillips in 1975. They used the brand name till 1992. Developed DTL logic. Second source for many companies. Current: Owned by Phillips Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded:
1996 (Nav Sooch)
History: Formed to make highspeed 8051s and analog mixed signal devices. Bought Cynal in 2003. Current: Makers of the fastest 8051 cores available. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1946 (Akio Morita &Masaru
Ibuka) History: Renamed Sony in 1958. Made NEC V20 and V30 chips. Also makes the chips in the Playstation and PS2 Current: Consumer electronics and fabs for gaming consoles as well as CELL architecture. Interesting Products: |
|
|
|
|
| Founded: 19?? History: Second sourced 1802s. Made the SCL4000 for military use. Current: No longer in business Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1998 History: Merger of SGS(Italy) and Thomson in 1987. Name change to ST in 1997. As been using the ST logo since the merger. Made Z80s and others. Second sourced Cyrix chips out of their Arizona fab. Current: Worlds largest semiconductor company. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1982 (Andreas
Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla, and Scott McNeally)
History: Stanford University Network. Made workstations and servers. Sparc, Super Sparc, Ultra Sparc Current: Makes Ultra Sparc III CPUs as well as Opteron based servers. Makes the Solaris OS. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1980 (Division of Honeywell)
History: Second sourced 6502s used in the Apple III. Closed in 1984 Current: No longer in existence Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1905 History: Temic division created in 1992. Also owned Matra (MHS) Made microcontrollers such as the 8031. Bought by Vishay in 1998. Current: Owned by Atmel Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1960 (State Ownedl)
History: Czech company that made Intel clones. Started out making tubes and TVs Current: Still provides fab/design for electronics Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1941 (Cecil
H. Green, Jon Erik Jonsson, Eugene McDermott and Henry Bates Peacock)
History: Developed the first transistor. Made the first microcontroller. Made intel chips with a license. Also designed and fabbed SuperSparc CPUs. Current: Major manufacturer of transistors, integrated circuits, and MEMS devices, particularly the digital signal processors that power cellular telephones and media players. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1939 (Merger)
History: Made light bulbs and RADAR systems for Japan. Made turbines for nukes. Developed 1mbit CMOS RAM in the 80s. Made some Intel clones. Also second sourced Motorola parts. Current: Makes MRIs, TVs and other items. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1995 (David Ditzel)
History: Transmeta first became known for designing, developing and selling its highly efficient x86-compatible software-based microprocessors, which deliver a balance of low power consumption, high performance, low cost and small size suited for diverse computing platforms. We also develop advanced power management technologies for controlling leakage and increasing power efficiency in semiconductor and computing devices. Current: Solely an IP (Intellectual Property) company now. They sell/license their designs for others to use. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1987 (George Hwang)
History: Original goal was to develop a SoC. Designed a 80387 that infringed on Intel's patent (Palmer Patent) Had HP fab the parts as HP had Intel licenses. Intel sued and won in the Supreme Court in 1993. Current: No longer exists Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1980 (Robert Tsao)
History: United Microelectronics Corp. Fabbed a 486 without a license. In the lawsuit UMC was banned from selling it in the USA Current: Purely a fab company now. Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: Early 1980's under the Unitra Group History: Polish company based in Warsaw. Made clones of 8086, 8080 and 8051. Current: In 1993, CEMI was declared bankrupt and offered for sale for the price of £1 to any buyer willing to take on its debt and its outdated production system. No takers were found, and production was eventually restarted in 1995 under ownership of Poland's Industrial Development Agency (ARP). Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1987 (Wen Chi Chen)
History: Formed from Symphony. VIA has been a leader in fabless production. They bought S3 Graphics, IDT Centaur, and Cyrix. Current: Makers of low cost, low power x86 CPUs. Also a world leader in chipset production. Fabless Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 198? (Doug Fairbairn)
History: Made second source 65C816. Major ASIC design house Current: Owned by Philips Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1981 (Chi-Shin
Wang, Edmund Sun, & Godfrey Fong)
History: Weitek specialized in high-performance digital semiconductor components and systems for the computer and workstation industries. Weitek floating point units have been used with Inmos Transputers (Floating Point System T-series Hypercube, 1986), National Semiconductor NS32032's (Encore Multimax, 1986), and Intel 386's (1988). The 2048 was used in the Thinking Machines Corporations CM-2 Connection Machine. Weitek produced floating point processors for HP. HP allowed to Weitek to use it's facilities to make chip for themselves and for their competition. Current: Bankrupt - Owned by Rockwell Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1970 (Alvin Phillips)
History: Western Digital Corporation was founded in 1970. Today, Western Digital is best known for its disk drives, however Western Digital didn't started making disk drives until 1988. In the mid-70's, Western Digital was the largest independent producer of calculator chips. In the 1980's Western Digital focus moved to PC's and developed controllers for floppy and hard disk drives. In, 1988 with the purchase of Tandon's disk drives, Western Digital's focused on supplying the PC industry with disk drives. Current: Makers of Hard drive Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1978 (Bill Mensch)
History:6502 and 65816 design work Current: Still making 6502 and 65816 CPUs Interesting Products: |
|
| Founded: 1974 (Federico Faggin & Ralph
Ungermann) History: Developed the Z80 MCU. A simpler 8080 design. Current: Still making CPUs based on the Z80 core including the eZ80Acclaim and Z180 Interesting Products: |
|
|
|
|
If you know of any more information on CPU companies, there founders or anything else you think interesting please e-mail me and I will add it.