About AMD

Type : Public Company
Listed : NYSE: AMD
Founded : 1969
Founders : Jerry Sanders and John Carey
Location : United States of America, Sunnyvale, California
Key Figures : Dirk Meyer, CEO
Industry : Semiconductors
Products : Microprocessors, GPUs, chipsets, video capture cards
Sales : $13 billion (2007)
Net income : $6.8 billion (2007)
Employees : 16,719 (2008)
Website : www.amd.com

ATI Technologies is a Canadian company , a manufacturer and supplier of graphics processors and motherboard chipsets, active from 1985 to 2006 and one of the largest in its industry.

In 2006, it was acquired by AMD Corporation and became a division of the AMD Graphics Products Group. The ATi brand is still preserved in the video adapter market, however, due to AMD's business restructuring, which began in 2009, it can be replaced by AMD.

Today AMD is one of the leaders in the market of computer microelectronics and, first of all, microprocessors. Despite the constant competitive race with such giants as Intel and NVIDIA, AMD's financial performance is growing steadily. Even against the backdrop of the crisis, experts predict a quite successful future for the company. In many ways, today's success of AMD was founded in the last century, when the era of personal computers was just beginning.

History of AMD graphics cards:

August 20, 1985 - Array Technology Inc. is founded. Then, within five months, the company changed its name first to Array Technologies Inc. and then (December 18, 1985) to ATI Technologies Inc. The main line of business was the supply of integrated graphics solutions for major PC manufacturers such as IBM and Commodore;

By 1987, the company had become an independent manufacturer of graphics adapters;

In 1991, Mach 8 was released - the world's first video processor capable of processing graphics without the help of a CPU. A year later, Mach 32 appeared, which was also able to speed up the work of the graphical interface;

In November 1993, the company became an open joint stock company. Its shares began to be traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange;

In 1994, the Mach 64 accelerator was released;

In April 1998, the company was recognized as the market leader in graphic solutions according to the International Data Corporation (IDC);

In November 1998, company president C.I. Ho was Canada's Entrepreneur of the Year and was named one of the 25 largest entrepreneurs in the world by Business Week Magazine in December;

In July 1999, the company's annual income was one billion US dollars;

2000 - the company releases the Radeon graphics processor;

2002 - In January, the company enters the GPU market for cell phones and other portable devices with the release of IMAGEON;

2003-2004 - Radeon X300-X800 video cards were released in the new PCI Express bus standard;

2004 - the company's annual income exceeded two billion US dollars;

2005-2006 - a new family of Radeon X1300-X1900 video cards was released;

2006 - ATI Technologies is acquired by the American company AMD through the buyback of all its shares for .4 billion October 25, 2006 ATI officially became a division of AMD;

In 2007, AMD announced that the division formed on the basis of ATI Technologies would be called the AMD Graphics Products Group within the company. At the same time, ATI's main brand, Radeon, will remain in the names of future cards;

In 2007, the company released a new graphics chip of the HD2000 series, which was not very successful in terms of competition with nvidia, later with the release of the HD3000 the situation improved slightly;

2008 - the company released a very successful HD4000 series, which made a worthy competitor to the Californian company;

2009 - A new HD5000 chip with DirectX11 support is being prepared for release.