Cyrix
More info
- Creator
- Jerry Rogers, Tom Brightman
- Released
- 1988–1999
- Successor
- Acquired by VIA Technologies
The Texas chipmaker that built cheaper x86 processors than Intel and taught the industry to measure performance in marketing numbers.
Cyrix started in 1988 in Richardson, Texas, making math coprocessors that outran Intel's own. Next came 486-compatible chips, and the 6x86 (1995) beat a Pentium at the same clock speed on ordinary integer code. Cyrix sold it with a "PR rating": a number indicating which Pentium it was equivalent to, which conveniently sat above the actual clock speed.
The weak spot was the floating-point unit. When Quake arrived in 1996, leaning almost entirely on floating point, the 6x86 suddenly looked slow. National Semiconductor bought Cyrix in 1997 and bet on the MediaGX, an early chip with graphics and audio on the same die. In 1999 the remains went to VIA, and the name faded out.