Cyrix Semiconductor was founded in 1988 by Jerry Rodgers, who with the help of a small but elite team of fellow ex-Texas Instruments engineers built a fabless semiconductor design company that created CPU chips. Their technical performance rivaled, and even surpassed, that of industry giants Intel, IBM and AMD. At various times, the actual manufacture of Cyrix chips was done by Texas Instruments, SGS Thomson and IBM. Over the course of time, rigorous competition with much better funded competitors and patent infringement lawsuits weakened Cyrix and forced it to seek financially stronger partners. Cyrix was eventually sold to National Semiconductor in 1997. Cyrix is just one of dozens of Richardson start-up companies that were founded by executives who honed their technical and managerial talents at Texas Instruments.