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| defunct computer companies of the united states | |
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The original product plan for QED was to build a MIPS microprocessor for a laptop computer. This was during the ACE initiative from Microsoft to support multiple RISC architectures for their new Windows NT operating system. System companies like DeskStation Technology and board companies like ShaBLAMM were building products in the hope that RISC-based Personal Computer s would become mainstream. While that market never materialized, the first product, the R4600 microprocessor, proved to be successful in several embedded markets such as networking routers and arcade games. Subsequent projects were designed for companies such as NEC , Toshiba , NKK and SGI . Several years later, in an attempt to increase product revenue, the company transformed itself to a product company selling its own line of MIPS microprocessors. At that time, the company changed its name to Quantum Effect Devices. After successful products like the RM5200 and the RM7000, the company went IPO on February 01, 2000. The company was acquired by PMC-Sierra on October 2000 and became the Microprocessor Products Division of PMC. Most of the microprocessor core development team derived from QED was laid off as a group by PMC-Sierra in June of 2005 ; the last few were laid off in January of 2006 . The company name is attributed to Tom Riordan. He believed that the company would survive to the age when semiconductor geometry dimensions would become so small that quantum effects would dominate the circuit behavior. |
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