Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, originally the Microelectronics and Computer Consortium and widely seen as the acronym MCC, was the first, and at one time one of the largest, computer industry research and development consortia in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. MCC ceased operations in 2000 and was formally dissolved in 2004.

Divisions

MCC did research and development in the following areas: * System Architecture and Design (optimise hardware and software design, provide for scalability and interoperability, allow rapid prototyping for improved time-to-market, and support the re-engineering of existing systems for open systems). * Advanced Microelectronics Packaging and Interconnection (smaller, faster, more powerful, and cost-competitive). * Hardware Systems Engineering (tools and methodologies for cost-efficient, up-front design of advanced electronic systems, including modelling and design-for-test techniques to improve cost, yield, quality, and time-to-market). * Environmentally Conscious Technologies (process control and optimisation tools, information management and analysis capabilities, and non-hazardous material alternatives supporting cost-efficient production, waste minimisation, and reduced environmental impact). * Distributed Information Technology (managing and maintaining physically distributed corporate information resources on different platforms, building blocks for the national information infrastructure, networking tools and services for integration within and between companies, and electronic commerce). * Intelligent Systems (systems that "intelligently" support business processes and enhance performance, including decision support, data management, forecasting and prediction).

History

The MCC was a response to the announcement of Japan's

Fifth Generation Project The Fifth Generation Computer Systems (FGCS) was a 10-year initiative begun in 1982 by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) to create computers using massively parallel computing and logic programming. It aimed to creat ...

, a large Japanese research project launched in 1982 aimed at producing a new kind of computer by 1991. The Japanese had formed similar industrial research consortia as early as 1956. Many European and American computer companies saw this new Japanese initiative as an attempt to take full control of the world's high-end computer market, and MCC was created, in part, as a defensive move against that threat. In late 1982, several major computer and semiconductor manufacturers in the

banded together and founded MCC under the leadership of Admiral

Bobby Ray Inman Bobby Ray Inman (born April 4, 1931) is a retired United States Navy admiral who held several influential positions in the United States Intelligence Community. Early years Inman was born and raised in the community of Rhonesboro, Upshur Coun ...

, whose previous positions had been Director of the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

and Deputy Director of the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

. Such formations were illegal in the United States until the 1984 Congressional passage of the " National Cooperative Research Act". Several sites with relevant universities were considered, including Atlanta, Georgia (Georgia Tech), the Research Triangle, N.C. (UNC), the Washington, D.C. area (George Mason), Stanford University and Austin, Texas (UT) which was the final selection. The University of Texas offered land upon which they would construct a new building specifically designed for the MCC within their Austin campus.

Ross Perot Henry Ross Perot (; June 27, 1930 – July 9, 2019) was an American business magnate, billionaire, politician and philanthropist. He was the founder and chief executive officer of Electronic Data Systems and Perot Systems. He ran an indepe ...

also offered the use of his private plane for 2 years for staff recruitment. Austin was selected as the site for MCC in 1983. Despite this purpose and the background of Inman and his senior staff, MCC accepted no government funding for many years and was a refuge for some avoiding work on

Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the "''Star Wars'' program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons ( intercontinental ballist ...

projects. MCC was part of the

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...

boom of the 1980s, reportedly the single largest customer of both

Symbolics Symbolics was a computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.

and Lisp Machines, Inc. (and like Symbolics, was one of the first companies to register a

.com The domain name .com is a top-level domain (TLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. Added at the beginning of 1985, its name is derived from the word ''commercial'', indicating its original intended purpose for domains registere ...

domain). In the 1980s its major programs were packaging, software engineering, CAD, and advanced computer architectures. The latter comprised artificial intelligence, human interface, database, and parallel processing, the latter two merging in the late 1980s. Many of the early shareholder companies were

mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

companies under stress in the 1980s. Over the years, MCC's membership diversified to include a broad range of high-profile corporations involved in

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology syste ...

products, as well as government research and development agencies and leading universities. In June, 2000 the MCC Board of Directors voted to dissolve the consortium, and the few remaining employees held a wake at Scholz's Beer Garden in Austin on October 25. Formal dissolution papers were reportedly not filed until 2004.

Spinoffs

While multiple technologies were transferred to member companies and government agencies in the final years, fourteen companies were spun out of MCC. Those spinoffs include: TeraVicta Technologies, Austin's first

MEMS Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), also written as micro-electro-mechanical systems (or microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems) and the related micromechatronics and microsystems constitute the technology of microscopic devices, ...

company; its focus was to develop microscopic switch technology for fiber optic switching and radiofrequency switching in mobile phones specifically to dynamically switch between the future 3G-4GLTE-future5G wireless communication frequencies and ensure mobile phones were communicating over the strongest wireless signal to reduce dropped calls. Robert Miracky was the founding CEO who spun out the first commercial metal micromachining technology developed by MCC researchers Jason Reed, Brent Lunceford, Richard Nelson, K.Hu, and C. Hilbert in a collaborative development program with IBM in a novel implementation and operational paradigm for solid-state coolers integrated with conductive MEMS switches. TeraVicta was liquidated under

Chapter 7 bankruptcy Chapter 7 of Title 11 of the United States Code (Bankruptcy Code) governs the process of liquidation under the bankruptcy laws of the United States, in contrast to Chapters 11 and 13, which govern the process of ''reorganization'' of a debto ...

proceedings in 2015. The Austin region subsequently built up a MEMS & Sensors value chain in the billions of dollars comprising companies such as 3M,

Cypress Semiconductor Cypress Semiconductor was an American semiconductor design and manufacturing company. It offered NOR flash memories, F-RAM and SRAM Traveo microcontrollers, PSoC programmable system-on-chip solutions, analog and PMIC Power Management ICs, Ca ...

, NXP Semiconductor,

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 ...

Silicon Labs Silicon Laboratories, Inc. (Silicon Labs) is a fabless global technology company that designs and manufactures semiconductors, other silicon devices and software, which it sells to electronics design engineers and manufacturers in Internet of Th ...

, and the Austin division of the now-defunct Silicon Valley Technology Center. Portelligent, a company that provides reverse engineering teardown services. At the time, Portelligent was the first company to commercialize such services; they had been provided by MCC to its member companies. Today, there are at least twelve companies worldwide that sell reports known as "reverse engineering teardown reports." Modern day teardown reports provide detailed information about technology products such as the bill of materials, microchip, and printed circuit board design specifics, manufacturing details including manufacturing location details for the entire value chain responsible for making electronics, including the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy smartphones. Portelligent was acquired by CMP Technology in 2007. Evolutionary Technologies International, a company focused on developing database tools and data warehousing, was spun off from MCC in 1990.

Notes

#
''Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation''
entry from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing. # David V. Gibson and Everett M. Rogers, ''R&D Collaborations On Trial'', Harvard Business School Press, 1994, , Introduction, p. 15. # David V. Gibson and Everett M. Rogers (1994), Chapter 7.

References

External links

Oral history interview with Laszlo A. Belady

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, University of Minnesota. Discusses his tenure as Vice President and Program Director of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC); as Chairman, CTO, and CEO of the

Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) is a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric US Holdings, Inc., which, in its turn, is the principal subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric in the United States. MERL is the North American arm of the Corpora ...