Weitek
More info
- Released
- 1981–1996
- Type
- Semiconductors (floating-point)
- Successor
- acquired by Rockwell
The floating-point chip maker that was faster than Intel's — until Intel baked the math unit into the 486.
Weitek was founded in 1981 in Sunnyvale by engineers who had left AMD. Its specialty was floating-point math: the 1167, 3167 and 4167 coprocessors sat beside Intel's 386 and 486 in a socket of their own and crunched faster than Intel's own 387 on heavy workloads. Weitek also built floating-point units for MIPS and SPARC workstations.
The trouble was that the market vanished under its feet: once Intel integrated the floating-point unit directly into the 486DX, no separate chip was needed. Weitek pivoted to graphics chips, ran out of runway and was sold to Rockwell in 1996.