The Chippewa Valley

Articles about high tech in the Chippewa Valley:

• 01/03/2005, Minnesota Public Radio: Supercomputer industry may be poised for a comeback
• 11/01/2004, New York Times: Steve Chen to move to China to start new Supercomputer company
• 10/27/2004, Pioneer Press: SGI unveils World's Fastest Supercomputer at NASA
• 04/01/2004, Chippewa Herald: "Celestica to shut down"
• 04/2003, Forbes: "Cray's Quiet Revolution"
• 06/2001, Milwaukee J-S: "Cray's High-Tech Legacy Still Thrives in Chippewa Valley "
• 09/2000, Eau Claire LT: Silicon Logic Engineering (started by former Cray Research engineers)
• 07/2000, EE Times: Union Semiconductor (USTC)/magnetoresistive RAM
• 05/2000, Eau Claire LT: Steve Chen & Doug Paffel's new company (Chen and Paffel were long-time Cray engineers before launching SSI, and later Sequent)
• 10/1996, Milwaukee Journal: High tech companies in Chippewa Valley

Links to local high tech companies' web pages:

• Corona Optical Systems (2000 startup in Eau Claire; some former Cray/SGI engineers)
• Eau Claire Area Industrial Development Corp.
• SGI -- a.k.a. Silicon Graphics, Inc. (bought Cray Research in 1996)
• Cray, Inc. (the former vector computer unit of SGI -- about 1/3 of the Chippewa Falls workforce -- sold in 2000 by SGI to Tera from Seattle, who subsequently changed their name to Cray, Inc.) (Are you confused yet?! ;-)
• Silicon Logic Engineering (SLE) (mostly ex-Cray engineers)
• Simulation Technologies (SimTech) (St. Paul company w/branch in Eau Claire)
• Honeywell Advanced Circuits (merged with Allied Signal, after Allied bought it from Johnson-Matthey, who bought the PCB design division of Cray Research in 2/96)
• Celestica (bought PCB manufacturing from Cray in 7/98)
• Gore (result of SSI's disbanding [SSI was a Cray spinoff in 1987])
• Sequent Computer (bought Chen's SCI in 1996(?), which was made up mostly of former Cray engineers) (...and was itself bought by IBM in 1999!) (IBM closed up shop in Eau Claire on 11/16/2001.)
• Hutchinson Technology (opened new manufacturing plant in Eau Claire in mid-90's)
• InterEMS.com Tonbu (new venture of Steve Chen & Doug Paffel, former Cray Research engineers) (CLOSED EAU CLAIRE OFFICE 8/2001)
• HPTI (High Performance Technologies, Inc.) (opened site in Eau Claire 8/2001 with nine former Tonbu employees, doing high-end computing DOD work.
• Union Semiconductor (USTC) (bought IC fab from Cray around 1998)
• Northern Lights Semiconductor Corp. (NLSC) (startup formed by former USTC employees in 2003)
• Pactiv (formerly Tenneco)