Evergreen Technologies, Inc., was a privately owned computer company active from 1989 to 2005 that manufactured a wide variety CPU upgrade chips for x86-based personal computers.[1] Based in Corvallis, Oregon, the company enjoyed a heyday in the 1990s, becoming a market leader in the CPU upgrade segment.[2]:80
Evergreen Technologies's 486 SuperChip from 1992
Evergreen Technologies was founded in 1989 by Kenneth "Mike" Magee in Corvallis, Oregon.[3][2]:80 Before founding Evergreen, Magee previously worked as vice president of Software Support Services, a Corvallis-based software vendor; he had also previously founded M.S.Systems, Inc., a computer store in Corvallis.[4][5]:C1 The company's first product, a CPU upgrade module that allowed motherboards with Intel 80286 processors to be upgraded to i386 processors, first shipped in May 1990. In 1992, Evergreen introduced the 486 SuperChip, a CPU upgrade module featuring Cyrix's Cx486 processor that allowed 286-class machines to achieve close to i486-level performance.[6] Evergreen later signed a contract with IBM allowing the latter to capitalize on Evergreen's patents and circuit-board layouts for their 486 upgrade modules, in 1994.[7]
At their heyday in the 1990s, Evergreen's largest competitors included Intel themselves, with their i486 and Pentium OverDrive chips, and Kingston Technology, with their TurboChip.[2]:76 Sales in Evergreen's upgrade modules grew 159-fold between 1993 and 1998;[3] the company sold roughly 40percent of their products to international buyers.[4]:C1 By mid-1997, Evergreen had expanded to possess four buildings in Corvallis, a manufacturing plant in Portland, Oregon, a sales office in New York City and a regional office in Swindon, England.[4]:C1 Between all locations, the company employed roughly 70 workers in that year.[4]:C1–C2
In early 1999, the company introduced the AcceleraPCI (codenamed the EclipsePCI), an upgrade expansion card allowing motherboards with the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus—with processors ranging from late-model DX4s to Pentiums to Pentium Pros—to be outfit with P6-based Celeron processors.[8][9] Development of the AcceleraPCI was Evergreen's most expensive undertaking to date and was highly publicized in the tech press.[3][8]
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