Austek Microsystems

Austek Microsystems Pty. Ltd. (1984-1994) was an Australian company founded by Craig Mudge to commercialize technology developed by CSIRO through their VLSI programme. It had a design office in Adelaide, and a marketing and support office in Silicon Valley.

Austek produced a number of digital signal processing chips, but their most successful products were cache controllers. In 1987 it released the A38152, the world's first single-chip cache controller operating at 20 MHz and to enhance the performance of 80386-based computer systems. This was followed in 1989 by the A38202 cache controller, also for 80386-based systems.[1]

Austek however was unable to compete with Intel in the cache controller market and attempted to expand into chipsets. The company headquarters was moved to Silicon Valley in 1991. The Adelaide design office closed in 1992, and the company was wound up in 1994.

Austek provided an environment of innovation, mentoring, design challenges, and experience that later went on to inject expertise to the VLSI industry within Australia and internationally.