Synertek was founded in 1973 as a masked ROM house that branched out into a fairly broad offering of MOS/LSI circuits (Static RAMs, ROMs, EPROMS, Dynamic and Static Shift Registers) and then sometime before 1979 became a second source to MOS Technology's 6502 microprocessor. They operated a semiconductor fabrication plant in Santa Clara California from 1973(74?) to 1985. Sometime after 1979 they were acquired by Honeywell.
At some point Synertek acquired Microcomputer Associates Incorporated, essentially Manny Lemas and Ray Holt, and renamed the group Synertek Systems Incorporated. In 1978 Synertek Systems released a single board evaluation kit called the Sym-1, a derivative of the Kim-1. Microcomputer Associates was founded by Manny Lemas and Ray Holt. ... The KIM-1, short for Keyboard Input Monitor, was a small 6502-based microcomputer kit developed and produced by MOS Technology, Inc. ...
There was SuperFund attention to pollution at the Synertek factory site.