<p>Well, no, Cyrix was never really “done in”. It is true that Cyrix had issues with IBM as its foundry partner, with Cyrix signing an agreement allowing IBM to market Cyrix chips under its own brand-name, that didn’t really do Cyrix in. Cyrix got acquired by National Semiconductor. for about $550 million in 1997. Considering that Cyrix was only started in 1988, that means that the founders of Cyrix created more than half-a-billion dollars of market value in only 9 years. I think it’s safe to say that the founders of Cyrix and the initial investors all got very rich of Cyrix. I certainly wouldn’t mind having been one of those founders or initial investors. I’d be very happy to let a company I founded get “done in” if it means that I get to become a multimillionaire in the process.</p>
<p>Like I said, the vast majority of chip companies will never become household names like Intel or Texas Instruments. Most of them will fail. Of those that don’t fail, they will either be solid ongoing ventures, or they will be acquired by somebody. Intel has acquired numerous fabless chip companies. So have many of the other big boys. The process of acquisition makes the founders and initial investors filthy rich.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the point is, the vast majority of chip companies out there are now fabless. I don’t know how many American semiconductor companies actually own their own fabs (not counting small research fabs, I’m talking about the large-scale manufacturing fabs), but I have a feeling that the number is less than 10 - Intel, TI, AMD, Micron, Freescale, IBM, and a few others. But there are literally HUNDREDs of American chip companies out there, the vast majority of them being fabless. Hence, you don’t need to have raised the billions of dollars necessary to buy your own fab. Most new chip companies don’t.</p>
<p>After all, the truth is, fab manufacturing capacity is basically a commodity. Unless you happen to be have huge production schedules such as Intel or TI or any of the other giants, you really don’t need to own your own fab. For most chip companies, it makes far far more economic sense to simply rent fab time from one of the foundries. In fact, companies like TSMC and UMC base their entire business model off of selling fab time to fabless design firms. </p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC</a>
<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Microelectronics_Corporation[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Microelectronics_Corporation</a></p>