OPTi
 | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Fabless semiconductor |
| Founded | 1989 in Milpitas, California, United States |
| Defunct | Template:End date and age |
| Fate | Dissolved |
| Successor | OPTi Technologies (2002–2020) |
Key people |
|
| Products | Chipsets |
Number of employees | 235 (early 1990s, peak) |
| Website | opti.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 1996-11-13) |
OPTi Inc. was a fabless semiconductor enterprise based in Milpitas, California, focusing on creating chipsets for personal computers. The company ceased operations in 2001, with its assets transferred to an unrelated non-practicing entity named OPTi Technologies (which later adopted the name OPTi Inc.).
History
Established in 1989 by ex-employees of Chips and Technologies, OPTi initially produced affordable VLSI chipsets designed for i386SX- and i486-based AT motherboards. Among its early innovations were direct-mapped CPU cache and burst-mode cache chipsets that notably reduced the number of components on 486 motherboards running at 40 MHz. In 1991, OPTi successfully defended itself against a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Chips and Technologies concerning memory architecture.
By early 1992, OPTi had developed one of the pioneering local bus architectures for IBM PC compatibles, positioning itself against VESA local bus and the emerging PCI standard from Intel. As the Pentium processor gained prominence, the company shifted focus to PCI chipsets. In late 1992, OPTi launched a programmable writethrough–writeback cache chipset that supported up to 64 MB of RAM and processors from Intel, Cyrix, and AMD.
During its peak period in the early 1990s, OPTi employed approximately 235 individuals and achieved annual revenues of $164 million. Under CEO Kenny Liu (born 1954), the company recorded $100 million in revenue in fiscal year 1991. Despite a successful initial public offering in 1993, OPTi faced intense competition from Intel, which dominated the Pentium-class chipset market with a 66% share by 1994 compared to OPTi’s 10%. Liu stepped down as CEO in 1994 but continued serving as chairman.
Starting in 1994, OPTi gained traction in the mobile chipset sector with i486-based notebook solutions. Its PCI-based Viper-N chipset secured design wins from major manufacturers such as Toshiba, NEC, and Hewlett-Packard. The desktop-oriented Viper-M chipset was notable for supporting not only Intel Pentium processors but also rival CPUs like Cyrix 6x86 and AMD K5—unlike Intel’s chipsets which were restricted to Pentium compatibility.
In September 1995, OPTi became part of a semiconductor foundry coalition alongside United Microelectronics Corporation and other fabless companies to develop a fabrication facility producing chips at 250–350 nm process nodes located in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
OPTi briefly ventured into graphics hardware with the release of the TrueColor GUI Accelerator in August 1995. Prior to this, it had acquired MediaChips Inc., a designer of low-cost digital sound chips, incorporating their intellectual property into the OPTi 929 audio chipset launched in 1994. In 1997, Crystal Semiconductor—a subsidiary of Cirrus Logic—filed a patent infringement suit against OPTi and TriTech Microelectronics over mixed-signal audio technology used in the Viper-M chipset; by around 2000, courts ruled against OPTi, resulting in part of a $20 million damages award.
Dissolution, divestiture, and legal pursuits
OPTi faced significant challenges competing against Intel's stronghold in the chipset sector, with its sales nearly vanishing by the end of 1998. After moving its headquarters to Palo Alto, California, Bernie Marren, who had been a board member since 1996, was named CEO in 1998. In 1999, Marren redirected the company’s efforts away from chipsets toward the development of microcontrollers designed for notebooks, focusing mainly on LCDs and serial buses such as USB and IEEE 1394 (FireWire). These new products barely achieved break-even results, leading the board to unanimously decide in September 2001 to dissolve the corporation, subject to shareholder approval.
Following a year of inactivity, OPTi transferred its semiconductor operations and assets to an independent entity called OPTi Technologies. Marren assumed the CEO role at this successor company, which later adopted the name OPTi Inc. This new company primarily functioned as a non-practicing entity, concentrating on patent licensing and initiating lawsuits against other semiconductor manufacturers for alleged patent infringements under Marren’s direction.
The company's legal actions commenced in 2001 with a case against Intel, culminating in a $13.5 million settlement related to patent acquisitions. Subsequently, OPTi pursued litigation against several firms including Amtel, Broadcom, Renesas, Silicon Storage Technology, STMicroelectronics, Standard Microsystems Corporation, and VIA Technologies. This vigorous enforcement of patent rights was characterized by CNET as a "patent infringement litigation rampage."
Beginning in 2006, OPTi launched multiple patent infringement lawsuits targeting Nvidia, securing $14.75 million by 2009 while continuing to litigate. That same year, OPTi filed suit against AMD; after protracted proceedings, the courts ruled in favor of OPTi in 2010, resulting in a settlement between $32 million and $35 million paid by AMD.
In January 2007, OPTi initiated legal action against Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas over unauthorized use of a patent concerning predictive cache memory snooping technology employed in Macintosh computers. The court awarded OPTi $21.7 million—comprising $19 million for patent infringement and $2.7 million as prejudgment interest. Apple initially filed an appeal but ultimately withdrew it by late 2010.
By 2010, OPTi Technologies Inc. had reduced its workforce to just three employees including Marren. The company continued its litigation efforts against VIA Technologies in 2013; it initially won a $3.1 million judgment but was later overturned on appeal. For the fiscal years ending in 2014 and 2015, OPTi reported no income from licensing and recorded operating losses. By 2018, only one employee remained before the company finally ceased operations in September 2020.