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NeoMagic Corporation is a
fabless semiconductor company
Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclus ...
and supplier of low-power audio and video integrated circuits
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...
for mobile use (MagicMedia).
In October 2012, NeoMagic entered into the e-commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...
arena with the acquisition of its MercadoMagico.com division. MercadoMagico.com provides a multivendor platform where users buy and sell products from one another or buy electronic products directly.
History
NeoMagic Corporation was founded in 1993 in California. Working with semiconductor vendorMitsubishi Electric
, established on 15 January 1921, is a Japanese multinational electronics and electrical equipment manufacturing company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the core companies of Mitsubishi. The products from MELCO include elevators an ...
as a key foundry supplier, NeoMagic introduced its first graphics processors
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobil ...
in 1995; these were notable for being the first chips to combine a graphics logic and DRAM
Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxid ...
video memory
Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxide ...
into one chip. As this was a more power-efficient method than ones previously used by graphics processors, most of the major laptop
A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...
manufacturers of the time began to use NeoMagic graphics chips in their systems. In 2000, NeoMagic left the laptop market completely, and switched their focus to producing systems on a chip, or SOCs, for mobile phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...
s and other handheld devices, like PDA
PDA may refer to:
Science and technology
* Patron-driven acquisition, a mechanism for libraries to purchase books
*Personal digital assistant, a mobile device
* Photodiode array, a type of detector
* Polydiacetylenes, a family of conducting poly ...
s. The firm's first handheld chips were unveiled in 2001, when NeoMagic introduced the MiMagic line. The initial MiMagic chips were based on a 32-bit MIPS Technologies
MIPS Technologies, Inc., formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc., was an American fabless semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture and a series of RISC CPU chips based on it. MIPS provides proce ...
RISC
In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comput ...
processor core, and featured 4MB of embedded DRAM
Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxid ...
, as well as a 1024x768-capable graphics chip, and an AC'97
AC'97 (''Audio Codec '97;'' also MC'97 for ''Modem Codec '97'') is an Sound reproduction, audio codec standard developed by Intel Architecture Labs in 1997. The standard was used in motherboards, modems, and sound cards.
The specification covers ...
-compatible sound processor. Subsequent versions of the MiMagic chip family starting from the MiMagic 3 in 2002, were based on 32-bit ARM RISC processor cores. In October 2012, NeoMagic acquired MercadoMagico.com.
MagicGraph
Adoption
These chips were used in a number of different laptop computers. In 1998,Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide.
Red Hat has become ass ...
was able to release the source code of the XFree86
XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and was available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free and open source software under the X ...
driver developed by Precision Insight Inc. which was previously distributed as proprietary software. The NeoMagic driver included in the Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...
is partly based on the XFree86 one.{{Cite web, url=https://github.com/torvalds/linux, title=torvalds/linux, website=GitHub, language=en, access-date=2020-03-03
References