Cyrix
Cyrix was a microprocessor manufacturer that began operations in 1988 as a supplier of high-performance math coprocessors for 286 and 386 systems. The company was founded by former employees of Texas Instruments, with whom he had a long but difficult relationship throughout his history. Cyrix founder Jerry Rogers aggressively recruited several engineers and put them to work together, eventually achieving a small but efficient design team of 30 people.
Cyrix merged with National Semiconductor on November 11, 1997, later being sold to VIA Technologies.
Products
Its early products included the 486SLC and 486DLC processors, released in 1992 and which, despite their names, were pin-compatible with the 386SX and DX architectures, respectively. Although they included an on-chip L1 cache as well as the 486 instruction set, they fell somewhere between a 386 and a 486 in performance. These processors were generally used as upgrades by users looking to improve the performance of their old systems. 386, and especially by integrators, who by changing the processor turned old, hard-to-sell 386 boards into low-priced 486 systems. These processors were widely criticized in peer review for not delivering the performance their names suggested and for confusion caused by their use of similar nomenclatures to Intel's SL line of processors and IBM's SLC, neither of which were related to Cyrix's SLC. The processors were mainly used in clone PCs and low-cost laptops. Cyrix would later release the 486SRX2 and 486DRX2 processors, which were essentially double clocked versions of the SLC and DLC and were marketed exclusively to end customers as 386 to 486 upgrades.
Eventually Cyrix was able to release a 486 that was pin-compatible with its Intel counterparts. Even so, this processor came to market later than AMD's 486 and was slightly underperforming than its AMD and Intel competitors, relegating it to the low-end hardware and upgrade market. While AMD managed to sell some of its 486 to large OEMs, mainly Acer and Compaq, Cyrix failed to break into this market. Cyrix processors gained some traction among small integrators and users, in part because their 486 processors at 50, 66, and 80 MHz ran at 5 volts, versus the 3.3 volts used by AMD, and could be used as upgrades for early 486 motherboards.
In 1995, with his Pentium clone still unfinished, Cyrix repeated his own history by releasing the Cx5x86, which could be plugged into socket 3 (for 386 and 486), ran at 100, 120 or 133 MHz and gave Pentium-like performance at 75 MHz. Unlike AMD's Am5x86, which was little more than a renamed, quadruple-clocked version of its 486, Cyrix's 5x86 implemented some features of Pentium architecture.
Later that same year Cyrix released its most famous processor, the 6x86, which was the first Cyrix CPU to outperform the Intel processor it was meant to compete against. Initially Cyrix tried to charge extra for this higher performance, but the 6x86 math coprocessor was not as fast as that of the Intel Pentium. Due to the growing popularity of 3D first-person shooters of the time, which made heavy use of floating point operations, Cyrix was forced to lower its prices. While the 6x86 quickly gained ground among enthusiasts and independent shops, unlike AMD its processors were still not used by major integrators.
The later 6x86L was a revision of the original 6x86 with lower power consumption, and the 6x86MX added the MMX instruction set and a larger L2 cache. The MII, based on the 6x86MX design, was little more than a name change intended to help the processor better compete against the Pentium II.
In 1996 Cyrix released the MediaGX processor, which integrated all the important individual components of a PC, including sound and video, onto a single chip. Initially based on the old 5x86 technology and running at 120 or 133 MHz, its performance was widely criticized but its low price made it a success. The MediaGX scored the first big win for Cyrix when Compaq used it in its lower-end Presario 2100 and 2200 computers. This led to more sales of the MediaGX to Packard Bell and also seemed to bring more prestige to Cyrix, as sales of the 6x86 followed. to Packard Bell and eMachines. Later versions of the MediaGX ran at speeds of up to 333 MHz and added MMX support. A second chip was added to improve graphics capabilities.
The PR nomenclature
Because 6x86 was more efficient instruction-for-instruction than Intel's Pentium and also because Cyrix sometimes used a faster bus than either Intel or AMD, Cyrix and competitor AMD co-developed the controversial PR nomenclature in an effort to compare their products more favorably with those of Intel. Because the 133 MHz 6x86 used to give slightly higher performance than the 166 MHz Pentium, the 133 MHz 6x86 was marketed as 6x86-P166+. The complaint filed by Intel, which challenged the use of the names "P166" and "P200" on non-Pentium products, led Cyrix to add the letter "R" to their names.
The PR nomenclature was controversial because while Cyrix processors used to outperform Intel's when running office applications, for the same clock frequency Cyrix processors were slower in floating point operations, so the PR nomenclature was controversial. PR nomenclature broke down when running the most recent games. In addition, the price of 6x86 promoted its use in low-end systems, which made performance even worse compared to Intel systems, which used better hard drives, video cards, sound cards, and modems.
Although AMD used the PR nomenclature in its early K5 processors, it was dropped early, although it would later use a similar concept when shipping its newer processors.
Manufacturing partners
Cyrix had always been a fabless company: Cyrix designed and sold its own processors, but outsourced chip manufacturing to an outside company. Initially, Cyrix used primarily the production facilities of Texas Instruments (TI) and SGS Thomson (now STMicroelectronics). In 1994, after a series of disagreements with TI and production problems with SGS Thomson, Cyrix turned to IBM Microelectronics, whose production technology rivaled that of Intel.
As part of the production agreement between the two companies, IBM was given the right to manufacture and sell Cyrix-designed processors under the IBM brand. While some industry insiders speculated that this would lead IBM to use 6x86 processors extensively in its product line, which would enhance Cyrix's reputation, IBM continued to use processors primarily from Intel, and to a lesser degree also from AMD, for the most part. of its products, relegating Cyrix designs to a few lower-end models marketed primarily outside the United States. In addition, IBM sold its 6x86 processors on the open market, competing directly with Cyrix, sometimes even at lower prices.
Legal issues
Unlike AMD, Cyrix never manufactured or sold Intel designs under license. Cyrix's designs were the result of meticulous reverse engineering carried out within the company. So while AMD's 386 and even 486 had some microcode written by Intel, Cyrix's designs were completely independent. Focused on eliminating potential competitors, Intel spent many years in legal battles against Cyrix, claiming that Cyrix's 486 violated Intel patents.
Overall, Intel lost the case against Cyrix. But the final settlement was struck out of court: Intel accepted that Cyrix had the right to manufacture its own x86 designs at any factory already licensed by Intel. Both companies gained from this settlement: Cyrix was able to continue manufacturing its processors at the facilities of Texas Instruments, SGS Thomson, and IBM (since all of them were cross-licensed with Intel), and Intel avoided a potentially embarrassing legal defeat.
The subsequent 1997 litigation between Cyrix and Intel was reversed: instead of Intel claiming that Cyrix's 486 processors violated its patents, Cyrix now claimed that Intel's Pentium Pro and Pentium II processors violated its patents, instead specifically on power management techniques and register renaming. The case was expected to spend years in court but was finally resolved through an out-of-court settlement. In fact, it was quickly resolved by another cross-licensing agreement. Intel and Cyrix now have full and free access to each other's licenses. The agreement did not state whether or not the Pentium Pro infringed Cyrix's patents, allowing Intel to simply continue manufacturing it in the same way, just as the previous agreement set aside the claim that Cyrix's 486 infringed Intel's patents.
Merger with National Semiconductor
In August 1997, while litigation against Intel was ongoing, Cyrix merged with National Semiconductor (which also already cross-licensed with Intel). This provided Cyrix with an additional marketing weapon and access to National Semiconductor's manufacturing facilities, which were originally built to produce RAM and high-speed telecommunications equipment. Since the manufacture of RAM and CPUs were similar, industry analysts at the time believed that the union made sense. The manufacturing agreement with IBM was maintained for some time, but Cyrix eventually moved all its production to the National Semiconductor plant. The merger improved Cyrix's financial base and gave them much better access to development facilities.
The merger also caused a change in strategy: National Semiconductor's priority was low-cost single-chip solutions like the MediaGX over higher-performance chips like the 6x86 or MII, a revision of the former aimed at to compete more directly against Intel's Pentium II. It is arguable that National Semiconductor doubted Cyrix's ability to produce high-performance chips or feared direct competition with Intel in the market: the MediaGX, with no direct competition in its market segment and with constant pressure on OEMs to market PCs. low-end, it seemed the safest bet.
National Semiconductor ran into financial problems shortly after the merger with Cyrix, and those problems affected Cyrix as well. By 1999, AMD and Intel alternated at the head of the race for clock speeds, reaching 450 MHz, while it took Cyrix nearly a year to get its MIIs from PR-300 to PR-333, with no chips running. actually at 300 MHz. One problem many of the MII models suffered from was that they used a non-standard bus speed of 83 MHz, while the vast majority of Socket 7 motherboards had a fixed 1/2 clock divider for the bus. PCI, normally at 30 or 33 MHz. With the 83 MHz bus of the MIIs, this caused the PCI bus to run at a speed of 41.5 MHz, out of specification. At this speed, many PCI devices became unstable or failed. Some motherboards included a 1/3 splitter, which resulted in a PCI bus running at 27.7 MHz. This was more stable, but it negatively affected system performance. The problem was only resolved in a few latest models that supported a 100 MHz bus. Meanwhile, the MediaGX was under pressure from lower-end chips from Intel and AMD, which kept coming down in price and offering ever-increasing performance. Cyrix, whose products had been considered high-performance in 1996, had slipped into the mid-performance segment, then the low-end segment, and finally was on the verge of losing its entire market. The last Cyrix-branded processor was the MII-433, which ran at 300 MHz (100x3) and outperformed an AMD K6/2-300 in FPU calculations (as demonstrated by Dr. Hardware benchmarks). However, this processor was constantly compared against real 433 MHz processors from other manufacturers, making the comparison quite unfair.
National Semiconductor thus moved away from the processor market, and without direction, Cyrix engineers began to leave the company. By the time National Semiconductor sold Cyrix to VIA Technologies, the processor design team was gone and the MII market was gone. VIA used the Cyrix name on a processor designed by Centaur Technology, as they thought Cyrix would have better recognition than Centaur or even VIA. National Semiconductor retained the MediaGX design for a few more years, renaming it the Geode and hoping to sell it as an embedded processor. They finally sold it to AMD in 2003.
In June 2006, AMD introduced the lowest power consumption processor at only 0.9 W. This processor is based on the Geode core. Cyrix's architectural ingenuity lives on like this.
Legacy
Although the company was short-lived and its brand name has not been actively used by its current owner, Cyrix's competition with AMD created the market for low-cost processors, which significantly lowered the average PC price and which ended up forcing Intel to launch its line of low-cost Celeron processors and rapidly lower the price of its fastest processors in order to compete. In addition, the Cyrix intellectual property acquisition and agreements would be used by VIA to defend itself in its legal battles with Intel, even after VIA Technologies ceased to use the Cyrix brand.