| Cirrus Logic | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | |
| Founded | 1981 |
| Founder | Dr. Suhas Patil |
| Headquarters | Austin, Texas, United States |
| Industry | Semiconductor industry |
| Website | http://www.cirrus.com/ |
Cirrus Logic (NASDAQ: CRUS) is a fabless semiconductor supplier specializing in analog, mixed-signal, and DSP chips. Year 1981 ( MCMLXXXI) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link displays the 1981 An entrepreneur is a person who has possession over a company enterprise, or Venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome Dr Suhas S Patil, born 1944 in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India, is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur Venture capitalist and Philanthropist The United States of America —commonly referred to as the For other uses of this term see Industry (disambiguation An industry (from Latin industrius, "diligent industrious" The semiconductor industry is the collection of business firms engaged in the design and fabrication of semiconductor devices Once Semiconductors became a viable business A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages The NASDAQ (acronym of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American Stock exchange. A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of Hardware devices implemented on Semiconductor They are presently headquartered in Austin, Texas. Their audio-processors and audio converters are found in many professional audio and consumer entertainment products, such as home-theater receiver and other set-top box hardware. Cirrus Logic's analog mixed-signal converter chips are also used in a wide variety of industrial application. At one time, Cirrus Logic also designed and sold modem controllers, Hard Disk controller chips, CD-drive controller chips, PC sound-card controllers, and PC graphics chips (Cirrus Logic has ended these business operations. Modem (from mo dulator- dem odulator is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode Digital information ) It was started as Patil Systems, Inc. , in Salt Lake City in 1981, by Dr. Suhas Patil and renamed as Cirrus Logic when it moved to Silicon Valley in 1984. Salt Lake City is the Capital and the most populous city of the U Dr Suhas S Patil, born 1944 in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India, is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur Venture capitalist and Philanthropist For the valley nicknamed "Silicone Valley" see San Fernando Valley.
Cirrus Logic has more than 900 patents and more than 600 products serving more than 3,000 end customers globally.
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Brief History
Patil Systems, Inc. , is founded in Salt Lake City in 1981, by Dr. Suhas Patil and renamed as Cirrus Logic when it moved to Silicon Valley in 1984 to focus on solutions for the growing PC components market. Michael Hackworth was named president and chief executive officer in January 1985, and served as CEO until February 1999. It joined the Nasdaq market listing in 1989 (symbol: CRUS). Cirrus Logic acquired Crystal Semiconductor, a leading supplier of analog and mixed-signal converter ICs, in 1991. In the early 1990s, Cirrus Logic became a leading supplier of PC graphics chips, audio converters and chips for magnetic storage products. David D. French joined Cirrus Logic, Inc. , as president and chief operating officer in June 1998 and was named chief executive officer in February 1999. Soon after joining the company, through an acquisition strategy Mr. French repositioned the company into a premier supplier of high-performance analog and digital processing chip solutions for consumer entertainment electronics. In June 2005, Cirrus Logic sold its video products operation to an investment firm, creating privately-owned Magnum Semiconductor. After resigning in March of 2007, Jason Rhode, formerly the vice president and general manager of Cirrus' Mixed Signal Audio Division, was named president and CEO in May 2007. Today, Cirrus Logic is focused on its high-precision technologies for analog and embedded integrated circuits for audio and industrial markets.
Timeline of key events
1981 – Patil Systems Inc. is founded in Salt Lake City by Dr. Suhas Patil. Company focuses on IC solutions for the growing PC components market.
1984 - Patil Systems Inc. renamed Cirrus Logic and moves headquarters to Silicon Valley
1989 – Company goes public and is listed on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker symbol CRUS.
1991 – Cirrus Logic acquires Crystal Semiconductor, a leading supplier of analog and mixed-signal converter ICs.
1996 – Cirrus Logic exits from the PC graphics card business
1998 – David D. French joins company as president and chief operating officer in June and becomes chief executive officer in February 1999. In the fall, company spins out its communication business unit.
2001 – Cirrus Logic announces plan to begin exit from magnetic storage chip business.
2001 – Cirrus Logic acquires several start-up companies with technologies in video decoding, video encoding, wireless networking, and networked digital audio.
2003 – Cirrus Logic closes wireless networking operations
2005 – Cirrus Logic sells video product assets to investment firm, creating Magnum Semiconductor (company maintains minority equity position).
2007 - Jason Rhode, formerly vice president and general manager of Cirrus' Mixed-Signal Audio division, is named president and chief executive officer, replacing French who resigned in March. In July, Cirrus Logic acquires Apex Microtechnology, a leading provider of high-power products for industrial and aerospace markets.
Graphics history
In the early 1990s, Cirrus Logic was a leading supplier of low-cost PC graphics chips. Cirrus's Microsoft Windows 2D GUI accelerators (GDI) were among the fastest in the low-end market-segment, outperforming competing VGA-chips from Oak Technologies, Trident Microsystems, and Paradise (Western Digital). Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. 2D computer graphics is the Computer -based generation of Digital images mdashmostly from two-dimensional models (such as 2D geometric models text and digital The Graphics Device Interface (GDI is one of the three core components or "subsystems" together with the kernel and the Windows API for the user interface Oak Technology was a supplier of Semiconductor chips for sound cards graphics cards and optical storage devices such as CD-ROM, CD-RW and DVD Trident Microsystems is a supplier of display-processors for Flat panel displays (plasma LCD, etc Western Digital Corporation ( (often abbreviated to WD) is a manufacturer of computer hard disk drives, and has a long history in the electronics industry as For example, the Cirrus GD5422 (1992) supported hardware acceleration for both 8-bit color and 16-bit color. Year 1992 ( MCMXCII) was a Leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1992 Gregorian calendar) 8-bit color graphics is a method of storing image information in a computer's memory or in an image file such that each Pixel is represented by one 8-bit Byte. It was one of the lowest-priced SVGA controllers to support both.
By the mid-1990s, when PC's had migrated to the PCI bus, Cirrus had fallen behind S3 and Trident Microsystems. The Peripheral Component Interconnect, or PCI Standard (commonly PCI) specifies a Computer bus for attaching peripheral devices to a Computer S3 Graphics Ltd is a company specializing in graphics chipsets When the announced release date of the GD5470 "Mondello" came and went, Cirrus's reputation in desktop PC-graphics suffered. (Mondello would have been the company's first 3D-accelerator, but instead became vaporware. Vaporware is a somewhat derogatory term used to describe a Software or Hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release but which then )
Later, the company was one of three companies to provide a VGA-controller for the 3dfx Voodoo Rush 3D-accelerator card. The term Video Graphics Array ( VGA) refers specifically to the display hardware first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, but through its widespread 3dfx Interactive was a company that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D Graphics processing units and later Graphics cards After dominating the field The chips Cirrus Logic used were derivatives of the Laguna family, with model numbers GD5645 and GD5646. The Voodoo Rush card combined two separate graphics controller chips for legacy-VGA (2D) and 3D functionality. Both chips shared the same framebuffer memory. However, the Voodoo Rush boards were a disappointment because the 2D chip was inferior to many cards of the time, and its 3D was slower than that of the older and separate Voodoo Graphics board. 3dfx Interactive was a company that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D Graphics processing units and later Graphics cards After dominating the field
The company's final graphics chips, the GD546x "Laguna" series of PCI/AGP 3D-accelerators, were novel in that they were one of the few video cards to use Rambus RDRAM. Rambus Incorporated ( founded in 1990, is a provider of high-speed interface technology most notably their Rambus Dynamic RAM memory technology, which Direct Rambus DRAM or DRDRAM (sometimes just called Rambus DRAM or RDRAM) is a type of synchronous dynamic RAM, designed by the Rambus However, like many other 2D/3D chips at the time, the feature set of perspective-correct texture mapping, bilinear filtering, single-pass lighting, gouraud shading, and alpha blending, was both slow and incomplete. Texture mapping is a method for adding detail surface texture or colour to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Bilinear filtering is a Texture filtering method used to smooth textures when displayed larger or smaller than they actually are In 3D computer graphics, the terms graphics pipeline or rendering pipeline most commonly refer to the current state of the art method of Rasterization Gouraud shading, named after Henri Gouraud, is a method used in Computer graphics to simulate the differing effects of light and colour across the surface of In Computer graphics, alpha compositing is the process of combining an image with a background to create the appearance of partial transparency
Graphics chipsets
- DESKTOP
- CL-GD5401 - ISA VGA chipset, also known as Acumos VGA (AVGA1)
- CL-GD5420 - ISA SVGA chipset, highly integrated (RAMDAC + PLL), 1 MB. Industry Standard Architecture (in practice almost always shortened to ISA) was a Computer bus standard for IBM compatible computers Industry Standard Architecture (in practice almost always shortened to ISA) was a Computer bus standard for IBM compatible computers Super Video Graphics Array or Ultra Video Graphics Array, almost always abbreviated to Super VGA, Ultra VGA or just SVGA or UVGA is Random Access Memory Digital-to-Analog Converter (RAMDAC is a combination of three fast DACs with a small SRAM used in computer graphics Display adapters A megabyte is a unit of Information or Computer storage equal to either 106 (1000000 Bytes or 220 (1048576 bytes depending on
- CL-GD5422 - Enhanced version of the 5420 (32-bit internal memory interface, hardware BITBLT. The range of Integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4294967295 or −2147483648 through 2147483647 using Two's complement encoding Bit blit ( bitblt, blitting etc is a Computer graphics operation in which several Bitmap patterns are combined into one using a "raster An ISA video card carrying this chipset offered 1280x1024 interlaced max resolution[1]). Industry Standard Architecture (in practice almost always shortened to ISA) was a Computer bus standard for IBM compatible computers
- CL-GD5424 - VLB version of the 5422, but resembles the 5426 in some respects. The VESA Local Bus (usually abbreviated to VL-Bus or VLB) was mostly used in personal computers
- CL-GD5426 - ISA bus and VLB up to 2 MB of memory.
- CL-GD5428 - Enhanced version of the 5426. Faster BITBLT engine. [2]
- CL-GD5429 - Enhanced version of the 5428; supports higher memory clock and has memory-mapped I/O.
- CL-GD5430 - Similar to 5429, but with 543x core (32-bit host interface).
- CL-GD5434 - Alpine family chip with 64-bit internal memory interface. '64-bit' CPUs have existed in Supercomputers since the 1960s and in RISC -based workstations and servers since the early 1990s. Only supports 64-bit mode if equipped with 2 MB of video memory; commonly equipped with 1 MB, extendable to 2 MB. A bit is a binary digit, taking a value of either 0 or 1 Binary digits are a basic unit of Information storage and communication
- CL-GD5436 - An optimized 5434.
- CL-GD5440 - Similar to the CL-GD5430. (GD54M40 has motion-video acceleration. )
- CL-GD5446 - 64-bit VisualMedia accelerator. 2D-only; adds motion-video acceleration to the CL-GD5436.
- CL-GD546X - The Laguna VisualMedia family of 2D, 3D, and video accelerators. '64 and '65 include 3D acceleration. (PCI, AGP). These chips use a single channel of RDRAM memory, providing up to 600 MB/s bandwidth. Direct Rambus DRAM or DRDRAM (sometimes just called Rambus DRAM or RDRAM) is a type of synchronous dynamic RAM, designed by the Rambus The '62 lacks 3D acceleration. All include a BitBLT engine, video windows, and 64x64 hardware cursor.
MOBILE
- CL-GD6420/6440 Used in some laptops, similar to older Cirrus chipsets (5410/AVGA2).
- CL-GD6205/6215/6225/6235 - Compatible with the 5420.
- CL-GD7541/7542/7543/7548 - Compatible with the 5428/3x.
See also
External links
A video card, also known as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, or graphics card, is a hardware component whose function is toDapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic