Cirrus Logic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (October 2007) |
| 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. 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.) 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.
Cirrus Logic has more than 900 patents and more than 600 products serving more than 3,000 end customers globally.
Contents |
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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). For example, the Cirrus GD5422 (1992) supported hardware acceleration for both 8-bit color and 16-bit color. 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. 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.)
Later, the company was one of three companies to provide a VGA-controller for the 3dfx Voodoo Rush 3D-accelerator card. 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.
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. 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.
[edit] 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.
- CL-GD5422 - Enhanced version of the 5420 (32-bit internal memory interface, hardware BITBLT. An ISA video card carrying this chipset offered 1280x1024 interlaced max resolution[1]).
- CL-GD5424 - VLB version of the 5422, but resembles the 5426 in some respects.
- 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. Only supports 64-bit mode if equipped with 2 MB of video memory; commonly equipped with 1 MB, extendable to 2 MB.
- 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. 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.
