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Chips and Technologies (C&T) was the first fabless semiconductor company
Fabless semiconductor company

A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices implemented on semiconductor chips. It achieves an advantage by outsourcing the semiconductor fabrication of the devices to a specialized semiconductor manufacturer called a Foundry which may have several Semiconductor fabrication plant, or "fabs"....
, a model developed by its founder Gordon Campbell. Founded by Dado Banatao
Dado Banatao

Diosdado Banatao , popularly known by his nickname Dado, is a well-known Filipino serial entrepreneur and engineer working in high-tech industry....
.

Its first product was an EGA IBM compatible graphics chip. This was followed by chipset
Chipset

A chipset or chip set refers to a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together. They are usually marketed as a single product....
s for PC motherboards and other computer graphics
Computer graphics

Computer graphics are graphics created by computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of pictorial data by a computer....
 chips.

C&T was acquired by Intel in 1997, primarily for its graphics chip business.

SuperMath J38700DX was a 80387DX
Intel 80387

The Intel 80387 was the math coprocessor for the Intel 80386 series of microprocessors, and the first Intel coprocessor to implement the IEEE 754 standard in every detail....
 compatible FPU
Floating point unit

A floating-point unit is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division , and square root....
 coprocessor
Coprocessor

A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor . Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, Savitsky-Golay derivation, or encryption....
.

C&T also designed a 386
Intel 80386

The Intel 80386, otherwise known as the i386 or just 386, is a microprocessor which has been used as the central processing unit of many personal computers and workstations since 1986....
-compatible microprocessor
Microprocessor

A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit . The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using Binary-coded decimal arithmetic on 4-bit Word ....
 known as the Super386 38600DX/38600SX using clean room design
Clean room design

Clean room design is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights and trade secrets associated with the original design....
 techniques, but this chip never enjoyed as much success as the 386 CPUs produced by Intel, AMD, and Cyrix
Cyrix

Cyrix was a Central processing unit manufacturer that began in 1988 in Richardson, Texas as a specialist supplier of high-performance math coprocessors for Intel 80286 and Intel 80386 systems....
.






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Encyclopedia


Chips and Technologies (C&T) was the first fabless semiconductor company
Fabless semiconductor company

A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices implemented on semiconductor chips. It achieves an advantage by outsourcing the semiconductor fabrication of the devices to a specialized semiconductor manufacturer called a Foundry which may have several Semiconductor fabrication plant, or "fabs"....
, a model developed by its founder Gordon Campbell. Founded by Dado Banatao
Dado Banatao

Diosdado Banatao , popularly known by his nickname Dado, is a well-known Filipino serial entrepreneur and engineer working in high-tech industry....
.

Its first product was an EGA IBM compatible graphics chip. This was followed by chipset
Chipset

A chipset or chip set refers to a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together. They are usually marketed as a single product....
s for PC motherboards and other computer graphics
Computer graphics

Computer graphics are graphics created by computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of pictorial data by a computer....
 chips.

C&T was acquired by Intel in 1997, primarily for its graphics chip business.

x86 products

C&T SuperMath J38700DX was a 80387DX
Intel 80387

The Intel 80387 was the math coprocessor for the Intel 80386 series of microprocessors, and the first Intel coprocessor to implement the IEEE 754 standard in every detail....
 compatible FPU
Floating point unit

A floating-point unit is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division , and square root....
 coprocessor
Coprocessor

A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor . Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, Savitsky-Golay derivation, or encryption....
.

C&T also designed a 386
Intel 80386

The Intel 80386, otherwise known as the i386 or just 386, is a microprocessor which has been used as the central processing unit of many personal computers and workstations since 1986....
-compatible microprocessor
Microprocessor

A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit . The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using Binary-coded decimal arithmetic on 4-bit Word ....
 known as the Super386 38600DX/38600SX using clean room design
Clean room design

Clean room design is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights and trade secrets associated with the original design....
 techniques, but this chip never enjoyed as much success as the 386 CPUs produced by Intel, AMD, and Cyrix
Cyrix

Cyrix was a Central processing unit manufacturer that began in 1988 in Richardson, Texas as a specialist supplier of high-performance math coprocessors for Intel 80286 and Intel 80386 systems....
. C&T 38605DX had 512 byte cache, but the 144 pin PGA package was incompatible with 386 socket.

Video chips


Chips and Technologies was the first company (outside of IBM) to deliver a compatible VGA chipset, the 82C451, opening up the IBM compatible graphics display market. This market was then entered by companies such as Trident Microsystems
Trident Microsystems

Trident Microsystems is a supplier of display-processors for flat panel displays . At one time, Trident was also a supplier of PC graphics chipsets and sound controllers....
, Western Digital
Western Digital

Western Digital Corporation is a manufacturer of computer hard disk drives, and has a long history in the electronics industry as an integrated circuit maker and a storage products company....
, Cirrus Logic
Cirrus Logic

Cirrus Logic is a fabless semiconductor company specializing in analog, mixed-signal, and audio DSP integrated circuits . They are presently headquartered in Austin, Texas....
, Oak Technologies, and others, until it was saturated.

Chips and Technologies provided the Wingine video card, a very high speed framebuffer that sat in a proprietary local bus slot on supported motherboards. Epson and JCIS were two manufacturers who offered motherboards featuring the Wingine local bus slot. The Wingine was popular with users of NEXTSTEP
NEXTSTEP

Nextstep was the original Object-oriented operating system, computer multitasking operating system that NeXT developed to run on its range of proprietary computers, such as the NeXTcube....
 for Intel processors, as it was one of the highest performing video cards supported by the operating system.

See also

  • NEAT chipset
    NEAT chipset

    The NEAT chipset was a 3-chip chipset for IBM PC compatible computers. It was developed by Chips and Technologies....

External links

  • at Byte Cellar