Chips and Technologies (C&T), founded in

Milpitas, California Milpitas ( Spanish for "little milpas") is a city in Santa Clara County, California, in Silicon Valley. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 80,273. The city's origins lie in Rancho Milpitas, granted to Californio ranchero José Mar� ...

in December 1984 by Gordon A. Campbell and

Dado Banatao Diosdado P. Banatao (born May 23, 1946) is a Filipino entrepreneur and engineer working in the high-tech industry, credited with having developed the first 10-Mbit Ethernet CMOS with silicon coupler data-link control and transceiver chip, the fir ...

, was an early

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 exclu ...

. Its first product, announced September 1985, was a four chip EGA chipset that handled the functions of 19 of IBM's proprietary chips on the

Enhanced Graphics Adapter The Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) is an IBM PC graphics adapter and de facto computer display standard from 1984 that superseded the CGA standard introduced with the original IBM PC, and was itself superseded by the VGA standard in 1987. In ...

. By that November's

COMDEX COMDEX (an abbreviation of COMputer Dealers' EXhibition) was a computer expo trade show held in the Las Vegas Valley of Nevada, United States, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually ...

, more than a half dozen companies had introduced EGA-compatible boards based on C&T's chipset.The Enhanced Graphics Standard Comes of Age
''

PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the presen ...

'', August 1986 This was followed by chipsets for PC

motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...

s and other computer

graphics chip A video display controller or VDC (also called a display engine or display interface) is an integrated circuit which is the main component in a video-signal generator, a device responsible for the production of a TV video signal in a computing ...

s. C&T was acquired by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 ser ...

in 1997, primarily for its graphics chip business. Former members of C&T founded Asiliant Technologies in January 2000 to continue the support of the CHIPS 65545, 65550, 65555, 69000, 69030, and other notebook and LCD oriented graphics ICs. Intel licensed the rights to build, sell, and service the C&T chips to Asiliant. Asiliant manufactured and sold C&T components for the next few years until it closed.

x86 products

C&T SuperMath J38700DX was an 80387DX compatible FPU

coprocessor A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor (the CPU). Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating-point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, cryptography or I ...

. C&T also designed a 386-compatible

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...

known as the Super386 38600DX/38600SX using

clean room design Clean-room design (also known as the Chinese wall technique) is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights associated with the original design. Clean-room design is use ...

techniques, but this chip never enjoyed as much success as the 386 CPUs produced by

, AMD, and

Cyrix Cyrix Corporation was a microprocessor developer that was founded in 1988 in Richardson, Texas, as a specialist supplier of floating point units for 286 and 386 microprocessors. The company was founded by Tom Brightman and Jerry Rogers. In ...

. C&T 38605DX had 512 byte cache, but the 144 pin PGA package was incompatible with 386 socket.

Motherboard chips and chipsets

* 82C100 - IBM PS/2 Model 30 and Super XT Computer Chip - Released in 1987, compatible with

8086 The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and June 8, 1978, when it was released. The Intel 8088, released July 1, 1979, is a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allo ...

, 80C86, V30, 8088, 80C88, V20 CPUs. Compatible with all PC/XT functional units: 8284, 8288, 8237,

8259 The Intel 8259 is a Programmable Interrupt Controller (PIC) designed for the Intel 8085 and Intel 8086 microprocessors. The initial part was 8259, a later A suffix version was upward compatible and usable with the 8086 or 8088 processor. The 82 ...

, 8254,

8255 The Intel 8255 (or i8255) Programmable Peripheral Interface (PPI) chip was developed and manufactured by Intel in the first half of the 1970s for the Intel 8080 microprocessor. The 8255 provides 24 parallel input/output lines with a variety of pr ...

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 ...

controller, SRAM controller, Keyboard controller, Parity Generation and Configuration registers. Additionally features EMS control, dual clock and power management. It supports up to 2.5 MB RAM. * 82C206 chip, introduced by C&T in 1986 and the core of the NEAT (New Enhanced AT) chipset. This chip, like its predecessor the 82C100, provided equivalent functionality to the TTL chips on the

PC/AT The IBM Personal Computer/AT (model 5170, abbreviated as IBM AT or PC/AT) was released in 1984 as the fourth model in the IBM Personal Computer line, following the IBM PC/XT and its IBM Portable PC variant. It was designed around the Intel 802 ...

's mainboard, namely: the 82284 clock generator, the 82288 bus controller, the 8254 Programmable Interval Timer, the two 8259 Programmable Interrupt Controllers, the two 8237 DMA controllers, the MC146818 NVRAM/ RTC chip. * 82C235 - Single Chip AT (SCAT) - Released in 1989, compatible with

. Supported LIM EMS 4.0, up to 16 MB memory and Shadow RAM. * 82C836 - Single Chip 386sx AT (SCATsx) - Compatible with PC/AT (bus), supported all the features of SCAT, added support for the

i386SX The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistorsi387SX math coprocessor.

Video chips

Chips and Technologies was the first company (outside of IBM) to deliver an EGA-compatible chipset. The Enhanced Graphics CHIPSet consisted of the four chips: * 82C431 Graphics Controller * 82C432 Sequencer * 82C433 Attributes Controller * 82C434 CRT Controller Later C&T announced a "Super EGA" dual-chip chipset: 82C435 Enhanced Graphics Controller and 82A436 Bus Interface with resolution up to 800×600 38MHz. C&T was the first company (outside of IBM) to deliver a compatible

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the PC industry within three years. The term can now ...

chipset, the 82C451, and VGA cards were introduced the same year as VGA (1987) based on the 82C451, opening up the IBM compatible graphics display market. This market was then entered by companies such as Trident Microsystems,

Western Digital Western Digital Corporation (WDC, commonly known as Western Digital or WD) is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology produ ...

Cirrus Logic Cirrus Logic Inc. is an American fabless semiconductor supplier that specializes in analog, mixed-signal, and audio DSP integrated circuits (ICs). Since 1998, the company's headquarters have been in Austin, Texas. The company's audio proces ...

Oak Technology Oak Technology was an American supplier of semiconductor chips for sound cards, graphics cards and optical storage devices such as CD-ROM, CD-RW and DVD. It achieved success with optical storage chips and its stock price increased substantially ...

, and others, until it was saturated. Chips and Technologies provided the Wingine video card, a very high speed

framebuffer A framebuffer (frame buffer, or sometimes framestore) is a portion of random-access memory (RAM) containing a bitmap that drives a video display. It is a memory buffer containing data representing all the pixels in a complete video frame. Mode ...

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 is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of propri ...

for Intel processors, as it was one of the highest performing video cards supported by the operating system. Latest HiQVision architecture (65550, 65554, 65555, 68554, 69000 and 69030) added a hardware acceleration.

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...

used a number of C&T controllers in their

PowerBook The PowerBook (known as Macintosh PowerBook before 1997) is a family of Macintosh laptop computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from 1991 to 2006. During its lifetime, the PowerBook went through several major revisions and r ...

line. Among others, the 65550 was used in the

PowerBook 3400 The PowerBook 3400c is a laptop computer in the PowerBook line manufactured by Apple Computer from February to November 1997. It was briefly the fastest laptop in the world. Using the PowerPC 603e processor running at speeds of up to 240 MH ...

and the faster 65554 was used in the "Kanga" PowerBook G3, which was derived from the 3400. Early

NuBus NuBus (pron. 'New Bus') is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT and standardized in 1987 as a part of the NuMachine workstation project. The first complete implementation of the NuBus was done by Western Digital fo ...

PowerBooks such as the

PowerBook 1400 The PowerBook 1400 is a notebook computer that was designed and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.) from 1996 to 1998 as part of their PowerBook series of Macintosh computers. Introduced in October 1996 at a starting price of $2,49 ...

used the less-sophisticated 65525A. C&T eventually ended up competing in the low end of the video market, the 65555 featured an

LVDS Low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS), also known as TIA/EIA-644, is a technical standard that specifies electrical characteristics of a differential, serial signaling standard. LVDS operates at low power and can run at very high speeds ...

transmitter and notably won a design in early Compaq Armada laptops. File:KL_Genoa_EGA.jpg, Genoa EGA File:CT LEGA.jpg, EGA card File:CT VGA.jpg, VGA-compatible ISA card

References

External links

* Paul McLellan
A Brief History of Chips and Technologies
SemiWiki.com
Chips&Technologies 82C451 Datasheet
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chips And Technologies Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States Fabless semiconductor companies Intel acquisitions Intel graphics Graphics hardware companies

x86 products

Motherboard chips and chipsets

Video chips

See also

References

External links