Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (abbreviated AMD; NYSE: AMD) is an American manufacturer of semiconductors based in Sunnyvale, California. The company was founded in 1969 by a group of former executives from Fairchild Semiconductor, including Jerry Sanders, III, Ed Turney, John Carey, Sven Simonsen, Jack Gifford and three members from Gifford's team, Frank Botte, Jim Giles and Larry Stenger. The current chairman and CEO is Dr. Héctor Ruiz and the current president and chief operating officer is Dirk Meyer.
AMD is the world's second-largest supplier of x86 based processors and the world's second largest supplier of graphics cards and GPUs, after taking control over ATI in 2006. AMD also owns a 37% share of Spansion, a supplier of non-volatile flash memory. In 2006 the company ranked eighth among semiconductor manufacturers.
General history
Early AMD 8080 Processor (AMD AM9080ADC / C8080A), 1977
AMD started as a producer of logic chips in 1969, then entered the RAM chip business in 1975. That same year, it introduced a reverse-engineered clone of the Intel 8080 microprocessor. During this period, AMD also designed and produced a series of bit-slice processor elements (Am2900, Am29116, Am293xx) which were used in various minicomputer designs.
During this time, AMD attempted to embrace the perceived shift towards RISC with their own AMD 29K processor, and they attempted to diversify into graphics and audio devices as well as EPROM memory. It had some success in the mid-80s with the AMD7910 and AMD7911 "World Chip" FSK modem, one of the first multistandard devices that covered both Bell and CCITT tones at up to 1200 baud half duplex or 300/300 full duplex. While the AMD 29K survived as an embedded processor and AMD spinoff Spansion continues to make industry leading flash memory, AMD was not as successful with its other endeavors. AMD decided to switch gears and concentrate solely on Intel-compatible microprocessors and flash memory. This put them in direct competition with Intel for x86 compatible processors and their flash memory secondary markets.
Litigation with Intel
AMD has a long history of litigation with former partner and x86 creator Intel.
• In 1986 Intel broke an agreement it had with AMD to allow them to produce Intel's micro-chips for IBM; AMD filed for arbitration in 1987 and the arbitrator decided in AMD's favor in 1992. Intel disputed this, and the case ended up in the Supreme Court of California. In 1994, that court upheld the arbitrator's decision and awarded damages for breach of contract.
• In 1990, Intel brought a copyright infringement action alleging illegal use of its 287 microcode. The case ended in 1994 with a jury finding for AMD and its right to use Intel's microcode in its microprocessors through the 486 generation.
• In 1997, Intel filed suit against AMD and Cyrix Corp. for misuse of the term MMX. AMD and Intel settled, with AMD acknowledging MMX as a trademark owned by Intel, and with Intel granting AMD rights to market the AMD K6 MMX processor.
• In 2005, following an investigation, the Japan Federal Trade Commission found Intel guilty on a number of violations. On June 27, 2005, AMD won an antitrust suit against Intel in Japan, and on the same day, AMD filed a broad antitrust complaint against Intel in the U.S. Federal District Court in Delaware. The complaint alleges systematic use of secret rebates, special discounts, threats, and other means used by Intel to lock AMD processors out of the global market. Since the start of this action, AMD has issued subpoenas to major computer manufacturers including Dell, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Sony, and Toshiba.
Merger with ATI
AMD announced a merger with ATI Technologies on July 24, 2006. AMD had paid $4.2 billion in cash along with 57 million shares of its stock, for a total of a US$5.4 billion. The merger had completed on October 25, 2006[4] and ATI is now part of AMD.
It has been reported that in December 2006 AMD received a subpoena from the Justice Department regarding possible antitrust violations relating to the merger.
AMD x86 processors
Discontinued
8086, Am286, Am386, Am486, Am5x86
AMD 80286 1982
In February 1982, AMD signed a contract with Intel, becoming a licensed second-source manufacturer of 8086 and 8088 processors. IBM wanted to use the Intel 8088 in its IBM PC, but IBM's policy at the time was to require at least two sources for its chips. AMD later produced the Am286 under the same arrangement, but Intel canceled the agreement in 1986 and refused to convey technical details of the i386 part.
AMD challenged Intel's decision to cancel the agreement and won in arbitration, but Intel disputed this decision. A long legal dispute followed, ending in 1994 when the Supreme Court of California sided with AMD. Subsequent legal disputes centered on whether AMD had legal rights to use derivatives of Intel's microcode. In the face of uncertainty, AMD was forced to develop "clean room" versions of Intel code.
In 1991, AMD released the Am386, its clone of the Intel 386 processor. It took less than a year for the company to sell a million units. Later, the Am486 was used by a number of large OEMs, including Compaq, and proved popular. Another Am486-based product, the Am5x86, continued AMD's success as a low-price alternative. However, as product cycles shortened in the PC industry, the process of reverse engineering Intel's products became an ever less viable strategy for AMD.
K5, K6, Athlon (K7)
AMD's first completely in-house x86 processor was the K5 which was launched in 1996.[6] The "K" was a reference to "Kryptonite", which from comic book lore, was the only substance that could harm Superman, with a clear reference to Intel, which dominated in the market at the time, as "Superman" .[7]
In 1996, AMD purchased NexGen specifically for the rights to their Nx series of x86-compatible processors. AMD gave the NexGen design team their own building, left them alone, and gave them time and money to rework the Nx686. The result was the K6 processor, introduced in 1997.
The K7 was AMD's seventh generation x86 processor, making its debut on June 23, 1999, under the brand name Athlon.
Current and future
Athlon 64 (K8)
The K8 is a major revision of the K7 architecture, with the most notable features being the addition of a 64-bit extension to the x86 instruction set (officially called AMD64), the incorporation of an on-chip memory controller, and the implementation of an extremely high performance point-to-point interconnect called HyperTransport, as part of the Direct Connect Architecture. The technology was initially launched as the Opteron server-oriented processor.[8] Shortly thereafter it was incorporated into a product for desktop PCs, branded Athlon 64.
Dual-core Athlon 64 X2
AMD released the first dual core Opteron, an x86-based server CPU, on April 21, 2005.[10] The first desktop-based dual core processor family — the Athlon 64 X2 came a month later.
Quad-core "Barcelona" die-shot
In early May, AMD had abandoned the string "64" in its dual-core desktop product branding, becoming Athlon X2, while upcoming updates involves some of the improvements to the microarchitecture, and a shift of target market from mainstream desktop systems to value dual-core desktop systems, to avoid conflict of target customers between another dual-core product based on the K10 microarchitecture, the Phenom X2.
K10
The latest microprocessor architecture, also known as "AMD K10" is AMD's new microarchitecture. The "AMD K10" microarchitecture is the immediate successor to the AMD K8 microarchitecture, and is expected due middle of 2007. K10 processors will come in a single, dual, and quad-core versions with all cores on one single die.
Bulldozer and Bobcat
After the K10 architecture, AMD will move to a modular design methodology named "M-SPACE", where two new processor cores, codenamed "Bulldozer" and "Bobcat" will be released in the 2009 timeframe. While very little prelimilary information exists even in AMD's Technology Analyst Day 2007, both cores are to be built from the ground up. The Bulldozer core focused on 10 Watts to 100 Watts products, with optimizations for performance-per-watt ratios and HPC applications, while the Bobcat core will focus on 1 Watt to 10 Watts products, given that the core is a simplified x86 core to reduce power draw. Both of the cores will be able to corporate with full DirectX compatible GPU core(s) under the Fusion label.
AMD Fusion
After the merger between AMD and ATI, an initiative codenamed Fusion was announced that merges a CPU and GPU on one chip, including a minimum 16 lane PCI Express link to accommodate external PCI Express peripherals, thereby eliminating the requirement of a northbridge chip completely from the motherboard. It is expected to be released in 2009, one of the fruits of Fusion is the codenamed Falcon family, implementing the codenamed Bulldozer core, aimed for a 10-100 W products, and further products will incorporate codenamed Bobcat core, focusing on sub-10 W markets, targeting UMPC products and small handheld devices which was widely adopted the ARM processors. Processors from this project, will also be deployed in notebooks, with quad-core processors planned for 2009 reelase.
Other platforms and technologies
AMD Live!
AMD LIVE! is a platform marketing initiative focusing the consumer electronics segment, with a recently announced Active TV initiative for streaming Internet videos from web video services such as YouTube, into AMD Live! PC as well as connected digital TVs, together with a scheme for an ecosystem of certified peripherals for the ease of customers to identify peripherals for AMD Live! systems for digital home experience, called "AMD Live! Ready".
AMD Quad FX platform
The AMD Quad FX platform, being an extreme enthusiast platform, allows two processors connect through HyperTransport, which is a similar setup to dual-processor (2P) servers, excluding the use of buffered memory/registered memory DIMM modules, and a server motherboard, the current setup includes two Athlon 64 FX FX-70 series processors and a special motherboard. AMD pushed the platform for the surging demands for what AMD calls "megatasking" for true enthusiasts[citation needed], the ability to do more tasks on one single system. The platform refreshes with the introduction of Phenom FX processors and the next-generation RD790 chipset, codenamed "FASN8".
Commercial platform
Virtualization
AMD's virtualization extension to the 64-bit x86 architecture is named AMD Virtualization, also known by the abbreviation AMD-V, and is sometimes referred to by the code name "Pacifica". AMD processors using Socket AM2, Socket S1, and Socket F include AMD Virtualization support. AMD Virtualization is also supported by release two (8200, 2200 and 1200 series) of the Opteron processors.
AMD also endorsed the development of I/O virtualization technology, currently the "AMD I/O Virtualization Technology" (also known as IOMMU) specification published using HyperTransport architecture by AMD had updated to version 1.2 [13][14], which the first finalized (version 1.0) specification was published prior to Intel's[citation needed].
Commercial initiatives
• AMD Trinity, provides support for virtualization, security and management. Key features include AMD-V technology, codenamed Presidio trusted computing platform technology, I/O Virtualization and Open Management Partition. [15]
• AMD Raiden, future clients similar to the Jack PC [16] to be connected through network to a blade server for central management, to reduce client form factor sizes with AMD Trinity features.
• Torrenza, co-processors support through interconnects such as HyperTransport as PCI Express (though more focus was at HyperTransport enabled co-processors), also opening processor socket architecture to other manufacturers, Sun and IBM are among the supporting consortium, with rumoured POWER7 processors would be socket-compatible to future Opteron processors. The move made rival Intel responded with the open of Front Side Bus (FSB) architecture as well as Geneseo [17], a collaboration project with IBM for co-processors connected through PCI Express. Note that AMD positioned Torrenza for commercial segment, whilst Intel positioned Geneseo for all segments including consumer desktop segments[citation needed].
• Various certified systems programs and platforms: AMD Commercial Stable Image Platform (CSIP), together with AMD Validated Server program, AMD True Server Solutions, AMD Thermally Tested Barebones Platforms and AMD Validated Server Program, providing certified systems for business from AMD.
Desktop platforms
Starting from 2007, AMD has also following Intel, to use codenames for each desktop platforms. The platforms, unlike Intel's approach, will refresh every year, putting focus on platform specialization. The platform includes components as AMD processors, chipsets, ATI graphics and other features, but continued to the open platform approach, and welcome components from other vendors such as VIA, SiS, and NVIDIA, as well as wireless product vendors.
AMD will also release a system controls utility in the future, providing easy system monitoring, allowing adjustments to voltages and clocks, as well as overall platform management, including CPU, chipset and graphics. The features are expected to be similar to the control panel in NVIDIA ForceWare series drivers.
Embedded systems
Alchemy Processors
In February 2002, AMD acquired Alchemy Semiconductor and continued its line of processor in MIPS architecture processors, targets the handheld and Portable media player markets. On 13 June 2006, AMD officially announced that the Alchemy processor line was transferred to Raza Microelectronics Inc.
Geode processors
In August 2003, AMD also purchased the Geode business which was originally the Cyrix MediaGX from National Semiconductor to augment its existing line of embedded x86 processor products. During the second quarter of 2004, it launched new low-power Geode NX processors based on the K7 Thoroughbred architecture with speeds of fanless processors 667 MHz and 1 GHz, and 1.4 GHz processor with fan, of TDP 25 W.
Flash technology
While less visible to the general public than its CPU business, AMD is also a global leader in flash memory. In 1993, AMD established a 50-50 partnership with Fujitsu called FASL, and merged into a new company called FASL LLC in 2003. The joint venture firm went public under ticker symbol SPSN in December 2005, with AMD shares drop to 37%.
AMD no longer directly participates in the Flash memory devices market now as AMD entered into a non-competition agreement, as of December 21, 2005, with Fujitsu and Spansion, pursuant to which it agreed not to directly or indirectly engage in a business that manufactures or supplies standalone semiconductor devices (including single chip, multiple chip or system devices) containing only Flash memory [19].
Mobile platforms
AMD started a platform in 2003 aimed at mobile computing, but with fewer advertisements and promotional schemes, very little was known about the platform. The platform used mobile Athlon 64 or mobile Sempron processors.
As part of the "Better by design" initiative, the open mobile platform, announced February 2007 with announcement of general availability in May 2007, comes together with 65 nm fabrication process Turion 64 X2, and is consists of three major components, as AMD processor, graphics from either NVIDIA or ATI Technologies which also includes integrated graphics (IGP), and wireless connectivity solutions from Atheros, Broadcom, Marvell, Qualcomm or Realtek.
Upcoming platforms were being discussed with Puma platform and Griffin processor to be released in 2008. AMD planned quad-core processors with 3D graphics capcabilities (Fusion) to be launched in 2009 with the Eagle platform.
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