Austek Microsystems
Encyclopedia
Austek Microsystems Pty. Ltd. (1984-1994) was an Australia
n company founded by Craig Mudge to commercialize technology developed by CSIRO through their VLSI programme. It had a design office in Adelaide
, and a marketing and support office in Silicon Valley
.
Austek produced a number of digital signal processing
chips, but their most successful products were cache
controllers. In 1987 it released the A38152, the world's first single-chip cache controller operating at 20 MHz and to enhance the performance of 80386-based computer systems. This was followed in 1989 by the A38202 cache controller, also for 80386-based systems.
Austek however was unable to compete with Intel in the cache controller market. The Adelaide design office closed in 1992, and the company was wound up in 1994.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n company founded by Craig Mudge to commercialize technology developed by CSIRO through their VLSI programme. It had a design office in Adelaide
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
, and a marketing and support office in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
.
Austek produced a number of digital signal processing
Digital signal processing
Digital signal processing is concerned with the representation of discrete time signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing...
chips, but their most successful products were cache
Cache
In computer engineering, a cache is a component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere...
controllers. In 1987 it released the A38152, the world's first single-chip cache controller operating at 20 MHz and to enhance the performance of 80386-based computer systems. This was followed in 1989 by the A38202 cache controller, also for 80386-based systems.
Austek however was unable to compete with Intel in the cache controller market. The Adelaide design office closed in 1992, and the company was wound up in 1994.
External links
- Austek history to 1988, published by Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre
- Austek Microsystems Pty Ltd (1984 - c. 1994), "Australian Science at Work", published by The University of Melbourne eScholarship Research Centre
- The Austek A38152
- The Austek A38202
- Austek's correlator chip