Silicon Prairie
The Silicon Prairie, a take on the Silicon Valley, can refer to one of several places in the United States including: the Dallas–Fort Worth area in Texas, the Chicago and Champaign-Urbana areas in Illinois, and Madison, Wisconsin.[1][2] Silicon Prairie is also a reference to a multi-state region loosely comprising parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Kansas.[3]
Dallas–Fort Worth Silicon Prairie
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North Texas's Silicon Prairie refers to north Dallas and Dallas and Fort Worth's northern suburbs, all part of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is named for the high concentration of semiconductor manufacturing, telecommunications, and other information technology related companies in the area.
Dallas–Fort Worth area business in these industry sectors include:
- Active Network, LLC (Dallas)
- Alcatel-Lucent (Richardson)
- Armor Defense (Richardson)
- AT&T (Dallas)
- Cisco (Richardson)
- CommScope (Richardson)
- CompuCom (Dallas)
- CSC (Fort Worth)
- Corelogic (Irving, Texas)
- Cyrix Corporation (Richardson)
- Dealertrack Technologies (Dallas)
- Dell Services (Plano)
- Diodes Incorporated (Plano)
- Electronic Data Systems (EDS) (Plano)
- Entrust (Addison)
- Ericsson (Richardson)
- Flying Horse Solutions (Dallas)
- Fujitsu Network Communications (Richardson)
- GameStop (Grapevine)
- Hotels.com (Dallas)
- Headstorm (Addison)
- HP Enterprise Services (Plano)
- i2 Technologies (Irving)
- Intuit (Plano)
- Match.com (Dallas)
- McKesson Corporation (Irving)
- Microsoft (Irving)
- Motorola (Dallas)
- NEC America (Irving)
- Nokia (Irving)
- Nortel (Richardson)
- NQ Mobile (Dallas)
- Okmetic (Allen)
- PivotPoint Solutions (Plano)
- RadioShack (Fort Worth)
- Raytheon (Plano)
- BlackBerry Limited [formerly Research in Motion (RIM)] (Irving)
- Rockwell Collins (Richardson)
- SoftLayer (Dallas)
- StreamVenue, LLC (McKinney, Texas)
- Texas Instruments (Dallas)
- Thursby Software (Arlington)
- Travelocity (Southlake)
- Tyler Technologies (Plano)
- Verizon Communications (Irving)
- VMware (Irving)
- Huawei (Plano)
- ZTE (Richardson)
- Wistron (McKinney)
The Telecom Corridor in Richardson is usually considered the birthplace of the North Texas Silicon Prairie, with Texas Instruments and University of Texas at Dallas dating back to the 1960s.[4][5] There are also a large number of recognized video and computer game developers in the area, known as the Dallas Gaming Mafia, including Gearbox Software, id Software, 3D Realms, Nerve Software, Bonfire Studios/Zynga Dallas, and Ensemble Studios.[6] These videogame studios, especially Gearbox Software, helped get public interest and municipal funding for the National Videogame Museum to make its home in Frisco.[7]
Illinois Silicon Prairie
[edit]The Illinois Silicon Prairie typically refers to the Chicago and Champaign/Urbana areas.
The Chicago Metropolitan Area is home to several companies in the industrial automation, consumer electronics, telecommunications, and online services industries. The Illinois Technology and Research Corridor along Interstate 88 and the Golden Corridor along Interstate 90 have particularly high concentrations of such businesses.
Among the Chicago area companies and organizations that comprise the Illinois Silicon Prairie are:
- 1871 (River North, Chicago)
- Alcatel-Lucent (Naperville)
- Amada America (Schaumburg)
- Anixter (Glenview)
- CDW (Lincolnshire)
- Cisco (Chicago)
- Classified Ventures (Chicago)
- CommScope (Joliet, Illinois)
- Continental Automotive Systems (Deer Park)
- Enova International (Chicago)
- FANUC Robotics America Corporation (Hoffman Estates)
- Groupon (Chicago)
- GrubHub (Chicago)
- Guaranteed Rate (Chicago)
- HighGround (Chicago)
- Hostway (Chicago)
- LiveText (LaGrange)
- Molex (Lisle)
- Mori Seiki USA/DMG (Hoffman Estates)
- Motorola Mobility (Chicago)
- Motorola Solutions (Schaumburg)
- Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems (Rolling Meadows)
- Omron (Schaumburg)
- Orbitz (Chicago)
- Panasonic Corporation (Buffalo Grove)
- Rand McNally (Skokie)
- Schneider Electric (Palatine)
- Shure (Niles)
- Tellabs (Naperville)
- Trunk Club (River North, Chicago)
- Underwriters Laboratories (Northbrook)
- USRobotics (Schaumburg)
- Westell (Aurora)
- WMS Gaming (Waukegan)
- Zebra Technologies (Lincolnshire)
Much of the high technology industry base in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area consists of research and small start-up companies working with the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Seven Fortune 500 companies have research entities at the university's research park located in Champaign. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is in Urbana.[8]