Austek Microsystems Pty. Ltd. (1984–1994) was an Australian company founded by

Craig Mudge __NOTOC__ Craig may refer to: Geology *Craig (landform), a rocky hill or mountain often having large casims or sharp intentations. People (and fictional characters) *Craig (surname) *Craig (given name) Places Scotland *Craig, Angus, aka Barony of ...

to commercialize technology developed by

CSIRO The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research. CSIRO works with leading organisations around the world. From its headquarters in Canberra, CSIRO ...

through their

VLSI Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) ...

programme. It had a design office in

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater A ...

, and a marketing and support office in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Count ...

. Austek produced a number of

digital signal processing Digital signal processing (DSP) is the use of digital processing, such as by computers or more specialized digital signal processors, to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations. The digital signals processed in this manner ar ...

chips, but commercially their most successful products were

cache Cache, caching, or caché may refer to: Places United States * Cache, Idaho, an unincorporated community * Cache, Illinois, an unincorporated community * Cache, Oklahoma, a city in Comanche County * Cache, Utah, Cache County, Utah * Cache Coun ...

controllers. In 1987 it released the A38152, the world's first single-chip cache controller, to enhance the performance of

80386 The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistorsA38202 Product Announcement
12 October 1989 Austek however was unable to compete with

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

in the cache controller market. In 1992 the Adelaide design office closed, the headquarters moved to Silicon Valley, and the company attempted to expand into chipsets. The company was wound up in 1994. Austek provided an environment of innovation, mentoring, design challenges, and experience that later went on to inject expertise to the VLSI industry within Australia and internationally.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Austek history to 1988
published by Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre

"Australian Science at Work", published by The University of Melbourne eScholarship Research Centre
The Austek A38152Austek's correlator chip
Defunct technology companies of Australia Electronics companies of Australia