A. Thampy Thomas (born 1945or1946) [1] is an electrical engineer who contributed to microprocessor pipeline architecture and founded semiconductor company NexGen microsystems.
In 1979, Thomas co-founded Elxsi, a semiconductor company in Silicon Valley. Thomas holds Ph.D. and M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University and B.E. in Electrical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. [1]
Thomas was the Senior Vice President of Engineering at Elxsi from 1979 to 1985. Elxsi was the first computer company to use more than one processor. Elxsi investors included the Tata Group and Arthur Rock. [2]
After Elxsi, Thomas founded NexGen Microsystems. [3] Nexgen implemented the x86 architecture in its processors. Their processors translated code designed to run on the traditionally CISC-based x86 architecture to run on the chip's internal RISC architecture. [4] After the announcement of a competitor to Intel's i386 line of CPUs, journalist John C. Dvorak described Thomas as "a big-time defender of CISC architecture". [5] Much of the underlying theory was developed during Thomas' doctorate work, under the supervision of his advisor, Ed Davidson.
Thomas was president, CEO, and chairman at Nexgen. He was succeeded as CEO by Atiq Raza in 1991 but remained chairman. [3] Nexgen went public in 1995, [6] and AMD acquired Nexgen later that year. [7]
Thomas has served as the chairman and CEO of PostX (now owned by Cisco), Director at Micro Linear Corporation (acquired by Sirenza), Director of Liquid Robotics, board member at Jupiter Research Foundation, and Director at Vintners' Alliance. [8] [9] [10]
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and fabless semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that designs, develops and sells computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets.
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures and sells computer components and related products for business and consumer markets. It is considered one of the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturers by revenue and ranked in the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue for nearly a decade, from 2007 to 2016 fiscal years, until it was removed from the ranking in 2018. In 2020, it was reinstated and ranked 45th, being the 7th-largest technology company in the ranking.
The K6 microprocessor was launched by AMD in 1997. The main advantage of this particular microprocessor is that it was designed to fit into existing desktop designs for Pentium-branded CPUs. It was marketed as a product that could perform as well as its Intel Pentium II equivalent but at a significantly lower price. The K6 had a considerable impact on the PC market and presented Intel with serious competition.
The Pentium is a x86 microprocessor introduced by Intel on March 22, 1993. It is the first CPU using the Pentium brand. Considered the fifth generation in the 8086 compatible line of processors, its implementation and microarchitecture was internally called P5.
x86 is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. The 8086 was introduced in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of 8-bit Intel's 8080 microprocessor, with memory segmentation as a solution for addressing more memory than can be covered by a plain 16-bit address. The term "x86" came into being because the names of several successors to Intel's 8086 processor end in "86", including the 80186, 80286, 80386 and 80486. Colloquially, their names were "186", "286", "386" and "486".
NexGen, Inc. was a private semiconductor company based in Milpitas, California, that designed x86 microprocessors until it was purchased by AMD in 1996. NexGen was a fabless design house that designed its chips but relied on other companies for production. NexGen's chips were produced by IBM's Microelectronics division in Burlington, Vermont alongside PowerPC and DRAM parts.
Vinod Dham is an Indian-American engineer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is known as the 'Father of the Pentium Chip' for his contribution to the development of Intel's Pentium micro-processor. He is also a mentor and advisor, and sits on the boards of companies, including startups funded through his India-based fund Indo-US Venture Partners, where he is the founding managing director.
Elxsi Corporation was a minicomputer manufacturing company established in the late 1970s in Silicon Valley, US, along with a host of competitors. The Elxsi processor was an Emitter Coupled Logic (ECL) design that featured a 50-nanosecond clock, a 25-nanosecond back panel bus, IEEE floating-point arithmetic and a 64-bit architecture. It allowed multiple processors to communicate over a common bus called the Gigabus, believed to be the first company to do so. The operating system was a message-based operating system called EMBOS. The Elxsi CPU was a microcoded design, allowing custom instructions to be coded into microcode.
Harry L. "Nick" Tredennick was an American manager, inventor, VLSI design engineer and author who was involved in the development for Motorola's MC68000 and for IBM's Micro/370 microprocessors. He held BSEE and MSEE degrees from Texas Tech University, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Tredennick was named a Fellow of the IEEE; the citation reads "For the design and implementation of the execution unit and controller of the MC68000 workstation microprocessor".
The history of general-purpose CPUs is a continuation of the earlier history of computing hardware.
RMI Corporation, formerly Raza Microelectronics, Inc., was a privately held fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Cupertino, California, which specialized in designing system-on-a-chip processors for computer networking and consumer media applications.
Montalvo Systems was a Silicon Valley start-up reportedly working on an asymmetrical, x86 capable processor similar to the Cell microprocessor. The processor was to use high-performance cores for performance-intensive threads, and delegate minor tasks to the simpler cores to save silicon and power. Matt Perry, former Transmeta CEO, was CEO and president of Montalvo; Peter Song, founder of failed x86 manufacturer MemoryLogix, was chief architect. Greg Favor was responsible for chip microarchitecture and Carlos Puchol was system and power architect. Another founding member, Kevin Lawton, of bochs and plex86 fame, was the processor simulator architect.
Mark D. Papermaster is an American business executive who is the chief technology officer (CTO) and executive vice president for technology and engineering at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). On January 25, 2019 he was promoted to AMD's Executive Vice President.
Lisa Tzwu-Fang Su is an American billionaire business executive and electrical engineer who is president, chief executive officer (CEO), and the chair of the semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
James B. Keller is an American microprocessor engineer best known for his work at AMD, Apple, and Tesla. He was the lead architect of the AMD K8 microarchitecture and was involved in designing the Athlon (K7) and Apple A4/A5 processors. He was also the coauthor of the specifications for the x86-64 instruction set and HyperTransport interconnect. From 2012 to 2015 he returned to AMD to work on the AMD K12 and Zen microarchitectures.
The AMD–Chinese joint venture is the agreement between the American semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and China-based partners to license and build x86-compatible CPUs for the Chinese-based market. China has been unable to produce a CPU based on its own technology; This is significant because the joint venture was negotiated and agreed to well before the 2018 trade war between the US and China and the international chip shortage of the early 2020s. Unlike Taiwan, China does not have an established or lucrative microchip industry or even capabilities for that matter. It is similar to the Zhaoxin joint venture supported by VIA Technologies. Unlike other industries in which China naturally excels, the microchip industry requires significant research and development.
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