RMI Corporation, formerly Raza Microelectronics, Inc., was a privately held

fabless semiconductor company Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

headquartered in

Cupertino Cupertino ( ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 60,38 ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, which specialized in designing

system-on-a-chip A system on a chip (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with memory, input/output, and dat ...

processors for

computer networking A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...

(known as

network processor A network processor is an integrated circuit which has a feature set specifically targeted at the Computer networking, networking application domain. Network processors are typically software programmable devices and would have generic characteri ...

s) and consumer media applications.

History

Atiq Raza was Hired as the CEO of NexGen in 1991, NexGen was later acquired by AMD in 1995. Raza was AMD's president and chief operating officer in the late 1990s after the NexGen acquisition. He left AMD in 1999 and founded Raza Microelectronics, Inc. in 2002. In 2003, SandCraft Inc folded, and Raza acquired the rights to its intellectual property. Behrooz Abdi became president and CEO in November 2007, and Raza Microelectronics changed its name to RMI Corporation in December 2007. In January 2008 Raza settled with the US

Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...

over an allegation of insider trading during 2006. RMI was not affiliated with Foundries Holdings, LLC, formerly known as Raza Foundries, Inc. Most of RMI's revenue came from its multi-core processor product line, which had major customers from China including Huawei, ZTE, and H3C. The China business of RMI was built from scratch by its co-founder Sunny Siu. In 2008, RMI merged with

NetLogic Microsystems NetLogic Microsystems, Inc. was a fabless semiconductor company that developed high performance products for data center, enterprise, wireless and wireline infrastructure networks. The company was founded in 1995 by Norman Godinho and Varad Srin ...

, which was acquired by

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data cen ...

in 2012.

Product lines

RMI had four product lines: three developed internally and one acquired. The XLR (introduced circa 2005) was a

multicore A multi-core processor (MCP) is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit (IC) with two or more separate central processing units (CPUs), called ''cores'' to emphasize their multiplicity (for example, ''dual-core'' or ''quad-core''). Ea ...

, multithreaded CPU used for network processing. XLR

integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

s had 2 to 8

MIPS architecture MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA)Price, Charles (September 1995). ''MIPS IV Instruction Set'' (Revision 3.2), MIPS Technologies ...

CPU cores, each extended to support 4 hardware threads. XLR processors included

HyperTransport HyperTransport (HT), formerly known as Lightning Data Transport, is a technology for interconnection of computer Processor (computing), processors. It is a bidirectional Serial communication, serial/Parallel communication, parallel high-Bandwi ...

PCI-X PCI-X, short for Peripheral Component Interconnect eXtended, is a computer bus and expansion card standard that enhances the 32-bit Conventional PCI, PCI local bus for higher Bandwidth (computing), bandwidth demanded mostly by Server (computing ...

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use in ...

, and

IEEE floating point The IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754) is a technical standard for floating-point arithmetic originally established in 1985 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The standard addressed many probl ...

unit per core and optionally

10 Gigabit Ethernet 10 Gigabit Ethernet (abbreviated 10GE, 10GbE, or 10 GigE) is a group of computer networking technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of 10 gigabits per second. It was first defined by the IEEE 802.3ae-2002 standard. Unlik ...

interconnects.Alt URL
/ref> A 2.0 GHz clock rate for the XLP was announced in May 2009. The XLS was a smaller, lower-cost multicore multithreading MIPS-based CPU used for network processing. The XLS family had options with 1 or 2 CPU cores, each with 4 hardware threads; 2 to 8

interfaces or two 10-gigabit Ethernet interfaces; and 1 or 2

PCI-Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a high-speed standard used to connect hardware components inside computers. It is designed to replace older expansion bus standards such as PCI, PC ...

interfaces. The XLS processor was widely used in Huawei's LTE base stations. The Alchemy processor was originally developed by Alchemy Semiconductor, which was then purchased by AMD. This product line was purchased by RMI in 2006. The Alchemy processor is a low-power

with integrated graphics and signal processing, designed for media players and portable video devices.RMI Alchemy Au1200 Processor
accessed November 3, 2008 The Orion network interface chip was used to translate Gigabit Ethernet data traffic to

synchronous optical networking Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) are standardized protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams synchronously over optical fiber using lasers or highly coherent light from light-emitting di ...

(SONET/SDH)

Optical Carrier Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) are standardized protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams synchronously over optical fiber using lasers or highly coherent light from light-emitting diode ...

OC-48 network links and back again, to connect

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, campus, or building, and has its network equipment and interconnects locally managed. LANs facilitate the distribution of da ...

s with

wide area network A wide area network (WAN) is a telecommunications network that extends over a large geographic area. Wide area networks are often established with leased telecommunication circuits. Businesses, as well as schools and government entities, use ...

circuits.{{Cite web , title= Orion Family , work= Product Brief , date= April 11, 2005 , url= http://www.razamicroelectronics.com/documents/Orion_Family_Product_Brief.pdf , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061015222837/http://www.razamicroelectronics.com/documents/Orion_Family_Product_Brief.pdf , archive-date= October 15, 2006 , accessdate= June 24, 2013 RMI processors were used in router,

firewall Firewall may refer to: * Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts * Firewall (construction), a barrier inside a building, designed to limit the spre ...

, and

switch In electrical engineering, a switch is an electrical component that can disconnect or connect the conducting path in an electrical circuit, interrupting the electric current or diverting it from one conductor to another. The most common type o ...

products sold by other networking equipment vendors, and consumer electronics manufacturers.

References

2002 establishments in California 2012 disestablishments in California American companies established in 2002 American companies disestablished in 2012 Computer companies established in 2002 Computer companies disestablished in 2012 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States Fabless semiconductor companies