The big switch

Abstract

When Mayank (Mike) Gupta and two colleagues launched SandCraft Inc. in 1996, the three former Silicon Graphics Inc. engineers had their hearts set on becoming a fabless semiconductor company. Four years, two strategy shifts and a change of market later, they are finally doing just that. SandCraft began life as a design house for semiconductor makers that had licensed a 64-bit processor architecture from MIPS Technologies.