Out in Front: April 25, 1996
SMC acquires EFAR to pursue chip-set market
Standard Microsystems Corp (SMC) has positioned itself to grab a bigger share of the PC IC market by acquiring EFAR Microsystems Inc, a small supplier of PC chip sets. Although SMC is a market leader in devices for standard PC I/O capabilities, such as keyboard control, real-time clock, and IDE disk control, EFAR provides system logic that SMC lacks. SMC, for its part, holds a key I/O patent for a digital-data separator that the company claims will provide an advantage over other chip-set suppliers as PC designs shrink to just a µP, memory, and an "everything-else" chip.
The first two products to result from the acquisition will appear this year when SMC introduces the Pentium-class UltraCore and UltraCache chip sets, both of which EFAR was developing when the acquisition occurred. UltraCore is a traditional four-chip set; UltraCache is a three-chip set that incorporates Level-2 cache using memory technology from Monolithic System Technology Inc.
—by Gary Legg
Standard Microsystems Corp, Hauppauge, NY. (516) 273-3100.
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