Quantum Effect Devices

Quantum Effect Devices (QED) was a microprocessor design company incorporated in 1991 as Quantum Effect Design. The three founders, Tom Riordan, Earl Killian and Ray Kunita, were senior managers at MIPS Computer Systems Inc.. They left MIPS at a time when the company was having a difficult time selling entire computer systems (MIPS Magnum) instead of concentrating on building microprocessor chips which was MIPS' original mission. Soon after, SGI purchased MIPS. IDT was a major funder and customer for the initial QED design.

The original product plan for QED was to build a MIPS microprocessor for a laptop computer. This was during the ACE initiative from Microsoft to support multiple RISC architectures for their new Windows NT operating system. System companies like DeskStation Technology and board companies like ShaBLAMM! Computer were building products in the hope that RISC-based personal computers would become mainstream. While that market never materialized, the first product, the R4600 "Orion" microprocessor, proved to be successful in several embedded markets such as networking routers and arcade games. Subsequent projects were designed for companies such as Toshiba and IDT (R4700), IDT & NKK (R4650), SGI and NEC (R5000).

The PowerPC 603q was a PowerPC microprocessor designed for Motorola, meant for Apple Computer's home PC and game machine designs. Neither of these designs were productized, so the PowerPC 603q never reached full production.

Several years later, in an attempt to increase product revenue, the company transformed itself to a product company selling its own line of MIPS microprocessors. At that time, the company changed its name to Quantum Effect Devices. After successful products introductions like the RM5200 and the RM7000, under its own "RISCMark" label, the company had its IPO on 1 February 2000. The initial stock price of $16 jumped to $56.50 on the first day of trading. The company was acquired by PMC-Sierra on October 2000; at the time, Quantum Effect Devices was valued in a stock swap worth $2.3 billion according to one estimate. The company became the Microprocessor Products Division of PMC. The acquisition was done by stock exchange and was valued at $2.3 billion. The team completed the RM9x00 product line while at PMC, but that product line was not successful in the marketplace. Most of the microprocessor core development team derived from QED was laid off as a group by PMC-Sierra in June 2005; the last few were laid off in January 2006.

The company name was attributed to Tom Riordan. He believed that the company would survive to the age when semiconductor geometry dimensions would become so small that quantum effects would dominate circuit behavior.