Silicon Integrated Systems
|
|
Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) is a company that manufactures, among other things, motherboards. The company was founded in 1987 in the Hsin-chu Science-based Industrial Park in Taiwan.
The SiS645 and SiS650 are very similar and contain integrated (chipsets) graphic cards. For a long period SiS branded integrated graphic cards and add-in boards, enjoyed a reputation for low performance, poor compatibility, and buggy drivers. However, post 2000, while still not offering feature rich chipsets, SiS solutions have remained cheap, but also delivered reasonable stability and performance.
In the late 1990s SiS took the decision to invest in their own fab facilities. This placed severe financial strain on the company, and reduced the amount of money available for investing in new products. A mistake the management eventually recognised.
SiS and ATI were the only two companies initially awarded licenses to produce third party chipsets for the Pentium 4, and the revenues from the 648 chipset (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1660&p=1), has played an important part in keeping SiS financially viable, most especially in the face of the success of VIA Technologies on the Athlon platform.
External links
- http://www.sis.com/
- Anandtech: SIS Coverage (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/default.aspx?manu=152&topicid=101)