Integrated Information Technologies or IIT was founded in 1987 by Dr. Chi-Shin Wang, and Dr. Y.W. Sing. Both had formerly worked for Weitek, Dr. Chi-Shin Wang was in fact a co-founder of Weitek in 1981. Together with a starting capital of $2.8 million they started up Integrated Information Technologies.
With their headquarters in Santa Clara Ca. they set out to design Intel
compatible, but better performing Math Coprocessors. It took IIT less than
two years to design and manufacture their first coprocessor, the 2C87. The
2C87 was a coprocessor, or FPU (Floating Point Unit), for the 80286 and was
introduced in July 1989.
To that date the only manufacturer of 80286 math coprocessors was Intel, it
introduced their 80287 7 years earlier in 1982. During those 7 years the
market for math coprocessors had grown considerably and there were good
profits to be made. In 1989 a 80287-10 was sold for about $230 and the
advanced 80C287 cost more than $370. At these prices the profit margins were
up to several hundred percent! IIT was not the only one that wanted a chunk
of that cake, Cyrix was also getting ready to enter the coprocessor market.
IIT was a so called Fabless semiconductor design company. This means that IIT had no production capabilities and had to rely on other companies to manufacture the products it had designed. Coprocessors from IIT were produced by various manufacturers including UMC and TSMC.
Many systems that were sold at the time (1989/1990) used a 80286 as CPU, however Intel had already introduced the 80386 in 1985. The 80386 was also coprocessor-less and IIT also introduced a 3C87 as coprocessor for the 386 CPU in 1989. The IIT 3C87 was available in a DX version for the 386DX and a SX version for the 386SX.
While IIT was one of the few companies that provided the 286 market with math coprocessors, the 386 market was a totally different story! Coprocessors for the 386 were produced by a total of 7 companies : Chips&Technologies, Cyrix, IIT, Intel, ULSI and Weitek.
