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. Jerry Rogers was also serving as the company Chief Executive Officer and president up until December 9, 1996, when he stepped down from this role, but remained on the Board of Directors.[2]
In 1992, Cyrix introduced its own i386 compatible processors, the 486SLC and 486DLC.[3] These had higher performance than the Intel parts, but a lower price.[4][5] They were primarily marketed to users looking to upgrade existing machines. Their release sparked a lengthy series of lawsuits with Intel while their foundry partner IBM was releasing the same designs under their own branding.
The combination of these events led Cyrix to begin losing money, and the company merged with National Semiconductor on 11 November 1997.[6][7] National released Cyrix's latest designs under the MediaGX name and then an updated version as Geode in 1999. National sold the line to AMD in August 2003 where it was known as Geode. The line was discontinued in 2019.[8]
History
At the end of March in 1992, the Cyrix Cx486SLC was released.[4] It was a x86 microprocessor that was pin-compatible with the 386SX and made for notebook computer applications. Following up shortly after in June 1992, the Cx486DLC was released, a desktop version of the SLC that was pin-compatible with the 386DX.[5]
Products
Cyrix FasMath coprocessors
The first Cyrix product for the personal computer market was a x87 compatible FPU coprocessor. The Cyrix FasMath 83D87 and 83S87 were introduced in November 1989.[9] The 83D87 was pin compatible with the Intel 80387, while the 83S87 was pin compatible with the 80387SX. Both provided up to 50% more performance, and additionally they had lower power consumption when idle, due to a low power operation.[10] Upon release the 83S87 cost $506 for a 16-MHz version and $556 for a 20-MHz version.[11] The Cyrix FasMath 82S87, a 80287-compatible chip, was developed from the Cyrix 83D87 and has been available since 1991.
486
Manufacturing partners
Cyrix had always been a fabless company: Cyrix designed and sold their own chips, but contracted the actual semiconductor manufacturing to an outside foundry. In the early days, Cyrix mostly used Texas Instruments production facilities and SGS Thomson (now STMicroelectronics). The Richardson, Texas office of VLSI Technology was also instrumental, as they provided workstations, EDA tools and ASIC design expertise to Cyrix engineers for their early design work. In 1994, following a series of disagreements with TI, and production difficulties at SGS Thomson, Cyrix turned to IBM Microelectronics, whose production technology rivaled that of Intel.
As part of the manufacturing agreement between the two companies, IBM received the right to build and sell Cyrix-designed CPUs under the IBM name. While some in the industry speculated this would lead to IBM using 6x86 CPUs extensively in its product line and improve Cyrix's reputation, IBM continued to mostly use Intel CPUs, and to a lesser extent, AMD CPUs, in the majority of its products and only used the Cyrix designs in a few budget models, mostly sold outside of the United States. IBM instead sold its 6x86 chips on the open market, competing directly against Cyrix and sometimes undercutting Cyrix's prices.
Legal troubles
Unlike AMD, Cyrix had never manufactured or sold Intel designs under a negotiated license. Cyrix's designs were the result of meticulous in-house reverse engineering, and often made significant advances in the technology while still being socket compatible with Intel's products. In Cyrix's first product, the 8087 math co-processor, Cyrix used hardware math multipliers rather than the CORDIC algorithm, which allowed the chip to be faster and more accurate than Intel's co-processor. Thus, while AMD's 386s and even 486s had some Intel-written microcode software, Cyrix's designs were completely independent. Focused on removing potential competitors, Intel spent many years in legal battles with Cyrix, consuming Cyrix financial resources, claiming that the Cyrix 486 violated Intel's patents, when in reality the design was proven independent.[16]
Intel lost the Cyrix case, which included multiple lawsuits in both federal and state courts in Texas. Some of the matters were settled out-of-court and some of the matters were settled by the court. In the end after all appeals, the courts ruled that Cyrix had the right to produce their own x86 designs in any foundry that held an Intel license. Cyrix was found to never have infringed any patent held by Intel. Intel feared having to face the antitrust claims made by Cyrix, so Intel paid Cyrix $12 million to settle the antitrust claims right before a federal jury in Sherman, Texas, was to hear and rule on the antitrust claims. As a part of the settlement of the antitrust claims against Intel, Cyrix also received a license to some of the patents that Intel had asserted that Cyrix infringed. Cyrix was free to have their products manufactured by any manufacturer that had a cross-license with Intel, which included SGS Thomson, IBM, and others.[16]
Merger with National Semiconductor
In August 1997, while the litigation was still in progress, Cyrix merged with National Semiconductor (who also already held an Intel cross-license). This provided Cyrix with an extra marketing arm and access to National Semiconductor fabrication plants, which were originally constructed to produce RAM and high-speed telecommunications equipment. Since the manufacture of RAM and CPUs are similar, industry analysts at the time believed the marriage made sense. The IBM manufacturing agreement remained for a while longer, but Cyrix eventually switched all their production over to National's plant. The merger improved Cyrix's financial base and gave them much better access to development facilities.
The merger also resulted in a change of emphasis: National Semiconductor's priority was single-chip budget devices like the MediaGX, rather than higher-performance chips like the 6x86 and MII. Whether National Semiconductor doubted Cyrix's ability to produce high-performance chips or feared competing with Intel at the high end of the market is open to debate. The MediaGX, with no direct competition in the marketplace and with continual pressure on OEMs to release lower-cost PCs, looked like the safer bet.
National Semiconductor ran into financial trouble soon after the Cyrix merger, and these problems hurt Cyrix as well. By 1999, AMD and Intel were leapfrogging one another in clock speeds, reaching 450 MHz and beyond, while Cyrix took almost a year to push the MII from PR-300 to PR-333. Neither chip actually ran at 300+ MHz. A problem suffered by many of the MII models was that they used a non-standard 83 MHz bus. The vast majority of Socket 7 motherboards used a fixed 1/2 divider to clock the PCI bus, normally at 30 MHz or 33 MHz. With the MII's 83 MHz bus, this resulted in the PCI bus running alarmingly out-of-spec at 41.5 MHz. At this speed, many PCI devices could become unstable or fail to operate. Some motherboards supported a 1/3 divider, which resulted in the Cyrix PCI bus running at 27.7 MHz.
Legacy
Although the company was short-lived and the brand name is no longer actively used by its current owner, Cyrix's competition with Intel created the market for budget CPUs, which cut the average selling price of PCs and ultimately forced Intel to release its Celeron line of budget processors and cut the prices of its faster processors more quickly in order to compete.
Additionally, the acquisition of Cyrix's intellectual property and agreements would be used by VIA Technologies to defend itself from its own legal troubles with Intel, even after VIA stopped using the Cyrix name.
In popular media
The film Eraser featured a defense corporation known as "Cyrex". Cyrix became concerned about the potential name conflict, and contacted the film production company. The name was then retroactively digitally edited to become "Cyrez" to avoid any confusion.
In the machinima series Freeman's Mind, Ross Scott as Gordon Freeman (of the Half-Life video game franchise) curses Cyrix processors as a computer breaks in Episode 3.[19]
External links
References
- Manufacturer articles (Cyrix) www.Coprocessor.info, retrieved 2008-09-10^
- Cyrix Online - Cyrix Announces Management Change 1997-06-16, retrieved 2025-03-31^
- Competition benefits consumers, Advancing technology produces good buy on computer chips Argus-Leader, 16 April 1993, retrieved 21 February 2022