In 1986 when we started Cyclone Microsystems, there were no URLs, public internet, certainly no mobile phones, iphones, and no concept of cloud computing. We just started building VMEbus computer boards for the nascent industrial market. Soon enough with the development of real-time operating systems, different industries discovered the competitive advantage and leverage of buying standard computing elements and only building the pieces that made their systems unique. Early adapters of this roll-you-own computing were military communication and medical imaging but quickly expanded to graphics, high energy physics, early cable Video-on-demand, and all types of communications. We had a boat and the tide started rising.

We started with a Motorola 68020 at 12.5 MHz, used almost every Intel i960 processor (and even built their evaluation platforms) and ended 30-ish years later with Freescale’s PowerPC at 1.8 GHz. While the technical journey was exciting, the pace, intensity, curiosity, and intelligence of our customers were the core of the experience. The pace of technology was a classic Icarus/Daedalus story: we needed to rapidly incorporate the latest technology into our products, but it didn’t always work. We, and our first-round customers, needed to sort it out on the fly.  Yes, at times, many times, we flew too close to the sun and crashed.  But we flew more than we crashed and that made all the difference.

We assembled an amazing crew who thrived in this technical problem-solving environment. Solving the problem was easy, re-creating the faults in a complex, changing environment was certainly not.  It was a privilege to work with the entire Cyclone crew – engineering, production, admin, - everyone.

However, the pace of technology accelerated and the multicores, ASICs, virtualization, and many other factors obliviated the need of dedicated specialized computing (in many cases). To adapt, we morphed into a specialized communication server vendor to IBM/Ericsson/Telcordia/ATT Bell Labs in the cellular communications industry – supplying and servicing seven of the top ten cellular providers worldwide. It was exciting, but at some point, further investment in our field didn’t show the promise of other external investments and it was time to wind down.

It was certainly a thrilling adventure, and all that currently remains is the cyclone.com domain, ready for service on another adventure.