Around 1976 Mitel was in a bind, the key component they used in their electronic Private Branch Exchanges (PBX), the 8804, was being obsoleted by Motorola. The 8804 replaced reed relays used on competing systems and so with no moving parts, very low power, and much higher reliability it was a key differentiator for the company. The component was an 8 by 4 analog switch array built in 9 micron metal-gate CMOS. They wouldn't be able to ship product without it! Fortunately around that time the Siltek foundry was up for sale at the ridiculous bargain price of $800k, It included the design tools (enormous Calma GDS-II machines), the complete semiconductor fabrication facility, test equipment, and a packaging facility. They bought it and redesigned the 8804 to solve their supply problem.
Some legendary semiconductor people were around at that time including Alan Aitken (the inventor of ISO-CMOS), Ralph Bennett (of whom many stories are told), Tam Nguyen, Peter Dakin, Peter Kung.
Siltek was formed in 1972 by Bob Cook President, Tom Stavish VP Operations and Bob Lesniewski VP Engineering in Bromont Quebec. The federal govt of Canada and the province of Quebec provided $2.5 million Canadian. The founders each contributed $100 thousand.
ReplyDeleteThe facility was 25,000 sq ft. State of the art manufacturing, design and test equipment was installed. In a 18 month period the company designed and solid 24 unique CMOS products. The high speed chip simulator software was developed by Bob Lesniewski who had extensive logic simulator and high predictive chip simulation. Siltek purchased the first high speed Xylink cutter/printer for mask development.
In 1975 Arthur S Little a widely recognized technology consultant reviewed the full operation of Siltek and recommended to the Canadian govt and the province of Quebec to invest an additional $1 million to bridge operations and design costs, since the world at the time was in a deep recession. Corporate growth, market share and profitability was forecasted by ADL post recession.
At the same time Quebec was to host the 1976 Olympics and was suffering huge over costs and massive delays. This caused Quebec to foreclose on as many as 20 high tech startups they have funded. Siltek was one of those companies
Dispute this Siltek was the catalyst for the formation of Bromont Quebec as Canada’s Silicon Valley.