Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation
Encyclopedia
Consortium
A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal....
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
MCC did research and development in the following areas:
- System Architecture and Design (optimise hardware and software design, provide for scalability and interoperability, allow rapid prototyping for improved time-to-market, and support the re-engineering of existing systems for open systems).
- Advanced Microelectronics Packaging and Interconnection (smaller, faster, more powerful, and cost-competitive).
- Hardware Systems Engineering (tools and methodologies for cost-efficient, up-front design of advanced electronic systems, including modelling and design-for-test techniques to improve cost, yield, quality, and time-to-market).
- Environmentally Conscious Technologies (process control and optimisation tools, information management and analysis capabilities, and non-hazardous material alternatives supporting cost-efficient production, waste minimisation, and reduced environmental impact).
- Distributed Information Technology (managing and maintaining physically distributed corporate information resources on different platforms, building blocks for the national information infrastructure, networking tools and services for integration within and between companies, and electronic commerce).
- Intelligent Systems (systems that "intelligently" support business processes and enhance performance, including decision support, data management, forecasting and prediction).
History
In late 1982, several major computer and semiconductor manufacturers in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
banded together and founded MCC under the leadership of Admiral Bobby Ray Inman
Bobby Ray Inman
Bobby Ray Inman is a retired United States admiral who held several influential positions in the U.S. Intelligence community.-Career:...
, whose previous positions had been Director of the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
as an American answer to Japan's Fifth Generation Project, a large Japanese research project aimed at producing a new kind of computer by 1991. The Japanese had formed consortia as early as 1956. Such formations were illegal in the United States until the 1984 Congressional passage of the "National Cooperative Research Act" Many European and American computer companies saw this new Japanese initiative as an attempt to take full control of the world's high-end computer market, and MCC was created, in part, as a defensive move against that threat. Several sites were considered; Austin, Texas was selected.
Despite this purpose and the background of Inman and his senior staff, MCC accepted no government funding for many years and was a refuge for some avoiding work on Strategic Defense Initiative
Strategic Defense Initiative
The Strategic Defense Initiative was proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic...
projects. MCC was part of the Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
boom of the 1980s, reportedly the single largest customer of both Symbolics
Symbolics
Symbolics refers to two companies: now-defunct computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.The symbolics.com domain was...
and Lisp Machines, Inc. (and like Symbolics, was one of the first companies to register a .com
.com
The domain name com is a generic top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Its name is derived from commercial, indicating its original intended purpose for domains registered by commercial organizations...
domain). In the 1980s its major programs were Packaging, Software Engineering, CAD, and Advanced Computer Architectures. The latter comprised Artificial Intelligence, Human Interface, Database, and Parallel Processing, the latter two merging in the late 1980s.
Many of the early shareholder companies were mainframe computer
Mainframe computer
Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
companies under stress in the 1980s. Over the years, MCC's membership diversified to include a broad range of high-profile corporations involved in information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
products, as well as government research and development agencies and leading universities.
In June, 2000 the MCC Board of Directors voted to dissolve the consortium, and the few remaining employees held a wake at Scholz's Beer Garden
Scholz Garten
Scholz Garten, also known as Scholz Biergarten or Scholz Beer Garden, is a bar in downtown Austin, Texas that has been in continuous operation since 1866. It is the oldest operating business in Austin, and one of the oldest in the state....
in Austin on October 25. Formal dissolution papers were reportedly not filed until 2004.
External links
- Oral history interview with Laszlo A. Belady, Charles Babbage InstituteCharles Babbage InstituteThe Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, University of Minnesota. Discusses his tenure as Vice President and Program Director of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC); as Chairman, CTO, and CEO of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. (MERL); and as Executive Director of the Austin Software Council. - Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation. FOLDOC. Retrieved Nov. 17, 2005.
- Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, from The Free Online Dictionary of Computing.