Exponential Technology
Type	Private
Founded	June 22, 1993
Founder	George Taylor Jim Blomgren
Fate	Ceased operations
Defunct	May 15, 1997
Headquarters	San Jose, CA

Exponential Technology, Inc., formally Renaissance Microsystems, Inc., was an American fabless semiconductor company. The company focused on designing ultra-fast PowerPC-compatible microprocessors.

Overview

Exponential Technology was founded in June of 1993 with the goal of designing a high performance PowerPC microprocessor. Exponential Technology received substantial funding from Apple Inc. In April 1994 under the directive of Michael Spindler they signed a product development agreement. Exponential announced their first microprocessor, the X704 in October of 1996 at the 7th Microprocessor Forum. Initial models ran at a lower 400 MHz which was still almost twice as fast as the competition. Exponential Technology was never successful in reaching mass market, to some degree because Apple itself which didn't want the performant chip from reaching customers of clone machines but also due to their slow introduction to market which took almost 18 months, eliminating most of the performance advantage the chip had.

Chips

• X704

See also

• Quantum Effect Device
• Chips and Technologies