Bipolar Integrated Technology

Bipolar Integrated Technology was a semiconductor company based in Beaverton, Oregon which sold products implemented with ECL technology. The company was founded in 1983 by former Floating Point Systems, Intel, and Tektronix engineers. The company was later renamed BIT Inc..

The initial product was a Floating point coprocessor chip set. Later, the company produced the B5000 SPARC ECL microprocessor (never reached production in a Sun Microsystems product, though used by Floating Point Systems) and the R6000 MIPS ECL microprocessor (which did reach production as a MIPS minicomputer). The manufacture of these processors were never really reliable, thus making them prohibitively expensive when compared to competing CMOS products. The company entered the telecommunications market with ATM devices and Ethernet switches. The company was eventually acquired by PMC-Sierra in 1996 for these later communications products.

Companies formerly based in Oregon
Moved out of state
  • Georgia Pacific
  • Louisiana Pacific
Acquired by out-of-state entities
  • Fred Meyer
  • Freightliner
  • LaCrosse Footwear (2012)
  • MathStar (2010)
  • McCormick & Schmick's (2012)
  • Meier & Frank
  • Merix (2010)
  • Oregon Steel Mills
  • Sequent Computer Systems
  • Tektronix (2007)
  • U.S. Bancorp
  • Willamette Industries (2002)
Defunct or out of business
  • Consolidated Freightways
  • Floating Point Systems
  • G.I. Joe's (2009)
  • Hollywood Video (2010)
  • Sprouse-Reitz (1994)
  • Troutman's Emporium


Famous quotes containing the words integrated and/or technology:

    “Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.”
    —Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)

    “The successor to politics will be propaganda. Propaganda, not in the sense of a message or ideology, but as the impact of the whole technology of the times.”
    —Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)