Bipolar Integrated Technology

Bipolar Integrated Technology, Inc. (BIT), later Bit, Inc., was a privately held[1] semiconductor company based in Beaverton, Oregon, which sold products implemented with emitter-coupled logic technology. The company was founded in 1983 by former Floating Point Systems, Intel, and Tektronix engineers.[2][3][4] The company, which occupied a 46,000-square-foot manufacturing facility at the Oregon Graduate Center,[5] raised $36 million in start-up capital within three years of its foundation.[6] The initial product was a floating-point co-processor chipset. Later, the company produced the B5000 SPARC ECL microprocessor (never reached production in a Sun Microsystems product, though used by Floating Point Systems).[7] They also produced the R6000 MIPS ECL microprocessor, which did reach production as a MIPS minicomputer.[8] Initial yields of the R6000 were very poor, leading to parts shortages for MIPS Computer Systems; the latter company attributed its first quarterly loss in October 1990 to BIT.[9] The two signed an agreement in June 1991 to allow BIT to market the R6000 on the open market, dissolving the previous exclusivity agreement with MIPS.[10]

Under its new president Fred Hanson, BIT had its first profitable year in 1991,[10] reaching peak revenues of $20 million. Revenues dropped the following year to about $10 million, however, after it had lost four of its largest customers, including MIPS, Floating Point, and Control Data.[11] The company eventually entered the telecommunications market with Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) devices and Ethernet switches. The company was acquired by PMC-Sierra in September 1996 for these later communications products.[12][13]

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