HCT

HCT (High Class Tech) is a tech giant producing computer and mobile processor chips founded in 2058. They are based in Changshou, Notchropolis.

History
HCT was initially a startup company by Jonathan Alverisk and Bella James. The company received positive coverage from many media sources during its inception in 2054. It took 5 years for their facilities to be constructed, and another year to mass produce the initial processor chips.

The HCT office in Changshou was completed on March 17, 2059. In 2070, HCT considered branching out after their overwhelming success with their Schofields microarchitecture. They announced a new internal hard drive lineup on April 1, 2070. On January 18, 2075, HCT and Aurelius announced a partnership in which HCT would be allowed to produce hard drives using Aurelius' proprietary RedLink connector.

HCT holds semi-annual events in Caniswell's Daniel Bounitch Presentation Centre, where they make several important announcements pertaining to the company, it's products and its future.

List of microarchitectures
Note: "D" denotes desktop chips and "M", mobile chips.

G1 "Hornsby"
The first generation of processors, codenamed Hornsby, launched in spring 2060. The lineup was received excellently, with reviewers praising the performance of the processors.

G2 "Sutherland"
The second generation of HCT processors was accompanied with a substantial clock speed boost.

G3 "Merrylands"
Launched in August 2065, this generation brought unprecedented clock speed improvements and was the first generation to introduce dual core processors.

HCT introduced their Turbo Boost technology with this generation, allowing CPUs to temporarily boost their clock speed when required.

G4 "Carlingford"
This generation launched in 2067 and was mainly a refinement over Merrylands.

Schofields
The fifth generation, introduced 2069, introduced a major split in the products. The processors were separated into tiers m7, m8 and m9, with m7 being budget focussed and m9 being high end. The naming scheme was also altered. Hyperthreading was also implemented in this generation, doubling the number of threads. As well as this, it was the first time that the processors broke the 1 GHz mark.

Schofields was also the first generation in which HCT provided power usage information (TDP) to aid the rapidly expanding PC building market.

Leumeah
On March 15, 2070, HCT announced their sixth generation Leumeah lineup at their semi-annual event in Caniswell.

Leumeah was the first generation to include an integrated GPU, which was expected in the previous release. Priority was given to mobile processors, as desktops usually came paired with stronger discrete graphics cards.

This generation was received with strong praise for performance improvements and the new integrated graphics.

Belmore
Released in summer 2072, this generation introduced quad cores but created controversy for disabling hyperthreding on m7 chips. An "e" series chip (Elite) was introduced for enthusiasts.

Denistone
Released in 2074, the 8th generation of processors refined the CPU architecture and graphics. Power usage of CPUs greatly decreased, with HCT having taken a focus on decreasing TDP.

Museum
The ninth generation of HCT processors was announced by HCT as codename: "Museum" and was launched in January 2075. This generation was expected to rebrand the Core mX series, but it was instead delayed to Hexham.

For the first time, an integrated GPU was included in all processors. The "D" branding for desktop processors and "M" branding for mobile processors were dropped in favour of an extensive lineups each dedicated to the desktop and mobile platforms. A "u" line was introduced, aimed at ultraportable computers with very low power usage.

HCT's Museum CPUs received critical acclaim, redefining the processor market with performance and price. The u-series mobile chips were received positively, with several light and thin notebooks released to take advantage of the low power CPUs.

Hexham
HCT's 10th generation of processors was announced in April 2076 and is expected to release in the middle of 2076. The Hexham microarchitecture rebrands Core m7, m8 and m9 as Core 2 h7, 2 h8 and 2 h9 respectively, indicating HCT's major redesign to the microarchitecture. Hexham notably includes native support for eEPI 2.0 and RIDE-2K. HCT's onboard graphics have also improved significantly.

HCT unveiled their flagship overclockable GamePro processors on June 24 under the Core 2 eXtreme brand with high end graphics and extreme CPU power.

On August 18, 2076, HCT released rebranded Museum processors as Hexham Core mX with lower power consumption.

UTS-157 benchmarks
To demonstrate their Retina 400 series graphics, HCT released a table comparing it to their past integrated graphics and to Cobalt and Quantum's graphics.

List of hard drives
HCT began to expand into storage in 2070. They designed an extensive lineup for a wide variety of uses.