Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Silicon Integrated Systems

 
Hoover's Profile: Silicon Integrated Systems Corporation
Home > Library > Business & Finance > Hoover's Profiles
Contact Information
Silicon Integrated Systems Corporation
No. 180, Sec. 2, Gongdaowu Rd.
Hsinchu, Taiwan
Tel. +886-3-516-6000
Fax +886-3-516-6668

Type: Public
On the web: http://www.sis.com
 Employees: 252

Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) develops integrated circuits made from -- what else? -- silicon. The fabless semiconductor company designs a variety of microchips, including core logic chipsets, graphics chipsets, and networking devices. SiS also supplies modules stuffed with dynamic random-access memories (DRAMs) to help boost the performance of desktop and notebook PCs. Taiwan-based silicon foundry giant United Microelectronics owns about one-fifth of SiS. The company was founded in 1987 and boasts locations in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the US. SiS has acquired the assets and technologies of ESS Technology's HD-DVD and Blu-ray DVD product lines for $13.5 million.

Key numbers for fiscal year ending December, 2008:
Sales: $164.3M

Officers:
Chairman: John Hsuan
President and CEO: Wen Chi (Daniel) Chen
Public Relations Director, Europe, Taiwan, and Japan: Jessie Lee

Competitors:
Broadcom
Intel
VIA Technologies

Search unanswered questions...

Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics

Wikipedia: Silicon Integrated Systems
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS)
矽統科技
Type Public (Taiwan Stock Exchange:TSE2363)
Founded 1987
Headquarters Hsinchu Science Park
 Taiwan
Website www.sis.com

Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS, Traditional Chinese: 矽統科技) is a company that manufactures, among other things, motherboard chipsets. The company was founded in 1987 in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan.

Contents

Business

In the late 1990s, SiS made the decision to invest in their own chip fabrication facilities. At the end of 1999, SiS acquired Rise Technology and that company's failed mP6 x86 core technology.[1]

Mainboard chipsets

One of the most famous chipsets produced by SiS was the late 486-age chipset 496/497 which supported PCI bus among older ISA- and VLB-buses. Mainboards using this chipset and equipped with CPUs such as the Intel 80486DX4, AMD 5x86 or Cyrix Cx5x86 processors had performance and compatibility comparable with early Intel Pentium systems in addition to a lower price.

After this late success, SiS continued positioning itself as a budget chipset producer. The company emphasized high integration to minimize the cost to implement their solutions. As such, SiS one-chip mainboard chipsets that included integrated video, such as the Socket 7-based SiS 5596, SiS 5598, and SiS 530 along with the Slot 1-based SiS 620. These were some of the first PC chipsets with such high integration. They allowed entire system solutions to be built with just a mainboard, system RAM, and a CPU.

Socket7

The SiS 530 (Sindbad) with SiS 5595 southbridge supported Socket 7, SDRAM 1.5GB max., a bus frequency from 66 MHz to 124 MHz, and can have from 2 to 8 MiB shared memory for an integrated AGP SiS 6306 2D/3D graphics controller. Includes integrated UDMA66 IDE controller. mainboards using the SiS 530 were positioned as cheap office platforms and paired often with low-cost chips from Intel competitors, such as the AMD K6 series or Cyrix 6x86. The graphics controller had Direct3D 6.0 and OpenGL support, although it was a very low-performance product for 3D acceleration.[2]

SiS 540 (Spartan) integrates SiS 300 graphics controller.

Socket 370, Slot 1

  • SiS 600/SiS 5595
  • SiS 620/SiS 5595
  • SiS 630 - includes North- and South bridges (SiS 960) and 2D/3D graphics controller (SiS 305)
  • SiS 633
  • SiS 635

Socket 478

SiS and ALi were the only two companies initially awarded licenses to produce third party chipsets for the Pentium 4. SiS developed the 648 chipset with this license.[3]

  • SiS 640 (IGP)
  • SiS 645
  • SiS 645DX
  • SiS 648
  • SiS 648FX
  • SiS 650 (IGP)
  • SiS 651 (IGP)
  • SiS 652 (IGP)
  • SiS 655
  • SiS 655FX
  • SiS 655TX
  • SiS R658 (Rambus)

Socket A (Socket 462), Slot A

  • SiS 730
  • SiS 733
  • SiS 735
  • SiS 740/SiS 961
  • SiS 741/SiS 964
  • SiS 745
  • SiS 746
  • SiS 746FX
  • SiS 748

Socket 775

  • SiS 649
  • SiS 655 (AGP chipset)
  • SiS 656
  • SiS 661
  • SiS 662 (IGP)
  • SiS 671
  • SiS 672

Socket 940, 754

  • SiS 755/SiS 964
  • SiS 760/SiS 964

Socket 939, AM2

  • SiS 756/SiS 965L

SiS created a multimedia chipset for the Xbox 360.[4]

Graphics chipsets

  • SiS 6326
  • SiS 300
  • SiS 301
  • SiS 305
  • SiS 315
  • SiS 320
  • SiS 326
  • SiS 330
  • SiS 340
  • SiS 360
  • SiSM672, dual output (primary output max. 1280x800, Seconday output max. 800x600)
  • SiSM672FX
  • SiS671
  • SiS671FX
  • SiS671DX
  • SiSM671MX
  • SiS968

Some cards contain 3D graphic accelerator but it is only functional with the SiS original Windows-only driver [1] (the company does not provide [2] documentation to write fully functional drivers by others). However Linux kernel includes the working third party driver that, while not supporting 3D gaming, makes the cards usable under Linux.

See also

References

  1. ^ Carroll, Mark. SiS acquires Rise CPU technology, EE Times, October 13, 1999.
  2. ^ Masrani, P. Asus P5S-B Super Socket 7 mainboard Review, PC Stats, April 12, 2000.
  3. ^ Lal Shimpi, Anand. SiS 648 - Taking Advantage of the P4 Situation, AnandTech, July 22, 2002.
  4. ^ Press Release: SiS Fuels Xbox 360 Storm with Powerful Multimedia Chipset, SiS, November 23, 2005.

External links

Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Silicon Integrated Systems

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Hoover's Profile. ©2008 Hoover's, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Silicon Integrated Systems".  Read more