In a new installment on computer history, [Bradford Morgan White] takes us through the sordid history of Cyrix, as this plucky little company created the best math co-processors (FasMath) and then a range of interesting x86-compatible CPUs that would give competing x86 CPUs a run for their money. Even though Cyrix played by the rules of licensing agreements, Intel would keep suing Cyrix repeatedly since the 1980s well into 1990s, for a total of seventeen times until Cyrix counter-sued for patent violations in May of 1997.
This case was settled between Cyrix and Intel, with a cross-licensing agreement established. Unfortunately these mounting legal costs and the stresses of keeping up with the competition (i.e. Intel) was proving too much and Cyrix was sold off to National Semiconductor, who wasn’t enthusiastic about competing with Intel. After this Cyrix got split up into Geode (sold to AMD) and Cyrix Technologies (sold to VIA). Interestingly, VIA’s x86 patent licenses and patents ended up being the foundation of Zhaoxin: a joint venture between VIA and Shanghai’s government which produces x86 CPUs for primarily the Chinese market.
We looked at the Cyrix Cx486DLC processor a while ago, and why their 386 upgrade options were perhaps not that great. Their later CPUs have however left a strong legacy that seems to endure in some way to this day.
Weitek math coprocessors were the fastest https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/3167/index.html
Sure, if the target application had compiled-in support specifically for the 3167. It wasn’t 80387-compatible, so that’s like saying “if my aunt had wheels, she’d be a wagon”.
Getting sued by Intel is simple: pose a threat to their profits. Literally, that’s all you have to do. Intel has lied and cheated every day of it’s existence all in the name of higher profits. It’s finally coming around to bite them and it’s long overdue.
And that makes them different from any other big company how?
I worked at Intel. Ethical company. Were they heavy handed to protect their IP and position? Which company wouldn’t be? Let’s see what comes next at Groveland?
The 486DLC-40 was a fine piece of silicon, I think, despite the criticism of the day.
Because it provided an upgrade-path to rock-solid, cool-running and trouble-free am386DX-40 systems.
Back in the early 90s, the 386DX-40 platform was very mature and sufficiently quick, also thanks to 40 MHz FSB.
It also had BabyAT mainboards that were extra ordinary compact and highly integrated.
We haven’t seen such a form-factor until microATX again, I think.
I still have my Am486 DX4-100 CPU as a reminder. At the time, to justify the purchase, I said to my wife that this will be the “last” CPU I’ll need for a looong time … it was so good. But I ate my words not to long after that as the next generation came out… It was a good CPU … but time moved on Moore’s Law back then, not on my time scale.
Oh, thanks for bringing up those names again. Nice memories of my 386SX-25 came back to my mind, and also how hard it was to convince my parents to cover 50% of a “co-pro” to become a… 387! I was like 12 years old at that time, spending countless hours configuring the keyboard, a Sound Blaster 8bits (bloody IRQs), and often walking to the computer shop nearby with a floppy asking for a format /s to restart my bricked machine :) . Then I was hit by the virus Flip, that left my HD with just 33MB (it had 60MB originally) and made me lose all the Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis saved game when I was close to the end :/ . A few years later my cousin showed me “something” called Linux on a Pentium CPU that had to run with the cover off because it overheated all the time. Only a few years later I switched to Linux not to look back… and all this before the 21st century (digital boys?).
I see what you did there. ;-)
I don’t know how to read, but I’ve got a lot of toys.
8008 was not even created by Intel!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8008#:~:text=The%208008%20architecture%20was%20designed,implemented%20and%20manufactured%20by%20Intel.
And AMD invented x64 and Intel’s offering Itanium was terrible, so Intel had a bought a licence from AMD to produce x64.
Now AMD is the biggest seller of PC’s CPU’s (for now)
None of this matters though because as Angelina Jolie said in the film “Hackers, “RISC architecture is gonna change everything.”.
ARM agrees!
Nice 👍.
Maybe Intel should have pivoted to arm and risc v 😄.
Well they did do arm with the marvell spinoff, afaik.
Actually Intel created x64 first, but never released it to push Itanium. Itanium’s problem was that compilers where much harder to write optimised for its VLIW instruction set. However it could run much faster programs which ran natively, but people kept using emulated x86 on it which was slow.
Oh, and you forgot RISC-V, which will pass ARM due to no licencing fees.
False on the “Intel created x64 first”. It was AMD creating the 64-bit extensions of the x86 instruction set. Intel didn’t do that because of Itanium.
Whether RISC-V will make a dent in ARM sales is yet to be seen, any prediction here is highly speculative. For now, RISC-V is far, far inferior to ARM for most applications.
At the other end of the spectrum… Cyrix once sued Intel over the Pentium PRO.
Aaahhh, the heady days of BYTE and PC Magazine two pounders. Everybody and their aunt had their own brand of PCs to sell and there were ISA boards for every need you could imagine.
At TI, I built an ISA board that was supposed to replace the MC68330 copro with the TMS34082 Copro. Never happened, but fun project. Big Endian. Little Endian. 16, 32 and 64-bit code.
TI then bought the rights from ST for an Intel compatible processor (5 parts to make one Intel). They compined it to make 1x chip that was Intel compatible CPU and sold it to China at low cost (TI’s specialty). That failed. Not because Intel pursued TI, but because TI was always one or two steps behind.
Cyrix made a good attempt. TI was thinking about licensing but that was too IP contentious.
Cyrix was buying trouble. Loads of incompatibility. I made that mistake. Just like Via and Amd in the and old days of computing.
Intel bought transmeta and then subsequently destroyed their tech.
WIntels long (possibly evil?) hegemony over computer technology is at its end.
“WIntels long (possibly evil?) hegemony over computer technology is at its end.”
Windows — good riddance.
Intel – well…
I guess this isn’t specifically an Intel thing per-se but I very much miss less-featured motherboards with lots of standardized slots that I could choose from lots of accessories to build the custom machine that I want.
I mean.. that isn’t entirely dead. But it’s not what it once was.
I remember buying one motherboard and going through 3 or more CPUs and as many changes of RAM before it just wasn’t compatible anymore. I still don’t think I have heard a soundcard as good as the AWE64 but who has an ISA bus?
Aureal Vortex II.
Yes! Had one and it was providing amazing 3D sound in games over regular stereo headphones.
…and then Aureal got sued out of existence by Creative Labs shortly after…
But was cyrix in the right or not when they got sued? Why do important details like that always get left out in underdog tales?
And what does the writer think “sordid” means?
The tone and content of the actual article in absolutely no way indicates that Cyrix was a “sordid” business.
“The problem was that Intel had sued Cyrix a total of seventeen times by this point, and the cost of these legal actions coupled with bad press due to FPU performance took their toll. With declining revenues, mounting losses, and no breakthrough product ready to hit the market Cyrix sold to National Semiconductor for around $550 million”
“Cyrix was at the front of the that wave of change, and the world is a better place today thanks to their fine work.”
Hopefully enough folks actually click through to the content.
The bigger picture was: if you were a PC maker, would you buy a chip from a company (Cyrix) that was sued so many times? And risk having to return those PCs? NOT.
Cyrix is the reason affordable CPUs surfaced, period.
I remember trying to help a friend with their computer problems frequently who had a Cyrix CPU. I don’t remember if it was late Win98 or early WinXP.
It just seemed to lock up a lot more than Intel or AMD.
I don’t know if the CPU was buggy, not quite implementing x86 correctly.
Or maybe it was Intel that had bugs in their implementation and Microsoft wrote for the bugs. Although that seems less likely because if so AMD must have done a great job emulating Intel bugs.
Or maybe it was no one’s fault but just because Mickeysoft didn’t regularly test their products on Cyrus CPUs and there was enough wiggle room from things not defined in the X86 standard that differences just happened.
I don’t know, but I remember going from being excited to see how it worked after reading Cyrix marketing material to suggesting to anyone that asked not to buy Cyrix.
In the early 90s I had a NEC AT PC of some kind with a socketed 286 (or maybe some clone of it) on board. I bought a MakeIt-486 upgrade kit for it that consisted of a small PCB with a Cx486SX – PCB plugged right into the socket for the 286.
https://www.cpushack.com/2014/08/30/improve-technologies-make-it-486-286-upgrade/
In the blockbuster Eraser, Arnold investigates the illegal development and sale of railguns to arms dealers. The company manufacturing the weapons in the film was called Cyrex, but with the lawsuits from IBM, Cyrex did not want parallel news stories about a fictitious similar moniker and promptly sued the studio. The studio capitulated and changed all references to Cyrez, where signage was simple rotoscoping and the audio was a least-effort-possible stretching of the timecode to turn Cyrex into “Cyrezzzzz” that sounds like a drunk guy verbally connecting to AOL. It’s ruined any official rewatchings on steaming but my VHS knows the real story!