ATI Technologies

Last updated

ATI Technologies Inc.
FormerlyArray Technology Inc. (Aug.–Sept. 1985)
Array Technologies Inc. (Sept.–Dec. 1985)
Company type Public
TSX: ATY
Nasdaq: ATYT
Industry Semiconductors
FoundedAugust 1985;39 years ago (1985-08)
Founders
  • K.Y. Ho
  • Benny Lau
  • Lee Ka Lau
  • Benny Lau
DefunctOctober 25, 2006 (2006-10-25)
FateAcquired by AMD in 2006, brand phased out in 2010
Headquarters
Markham, Ontario
,
Canada
Key people
K.Y. Ho (CEO)
Lee Ka Lau (President)
Revenue US$2.2 billion (2005)
US$16.9 million (2005)
Number of employees
2,700 (2004)  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Website ati.com (Archived October 8, 2006)

ATI Technologies Inc. was a Canadian semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985, the company listed publicly in 1993 and was acquired by AMD in 2006. As a major fabless semiconductor company, ATI conducted research and development in-house and outsourced the manufacturing and assembly of its products. With the decline and eventual bankruptcy of 3dfx in 2000, ATI and its chief rival Nvidia emerged as the two dominant players in the graphics processors industry, eventually forcing other manufacturers into niche roles.

Contents

The acquisition of ATI in 2006 was important to AMD's strategic development of its Fusion series of computer processors, which integrated general processing abilities with graphics processing functions within a single chip, which would become a popular option on computers in the following years, especially lower cost models.

In 2010, AMD ceased using the ATI brand name, renaming its flagship Radeon graphics processor products with its branding instead. [1]

History

Lee Ka Lau, [2] Francis Lau, Benny Lau, and Kwok Yuen Ho [3] founded ATI in 1985 as Array Technology Inc. [4] Working primarily in the OEM field, ATI produced integrated graphics cards for PC manufacturers such as IBM and Commodore. By 1987, ATI had grown into an independent graphics-card retailer, introducing EGA Wonder and VGA Wonder card product lines that year. [5] In the early nineties, they released products able to process graphics without the CPU: in May 1991, the Mach8, in 1992 the Mach32, which offered improved memory bandwidth and GUI acceleration. ATI Technologies Inc. went public in 1993, with shares listed on NASDAQ and on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

ATI's former Silicon Valley office at 4555 Great America Pkwy, Santa Clara, CA Atitechnologiessiliconvalley.jpg
ATI's former Silicon Valley office at 4555 Great America Pkwy, Santa Clara, CA
ATI "Graphics Solution Rev 3" from 1985/1986, supporting Hercules graphics. As the PCB reveals, the layout dates from 1985, whereas the marking on the central chip CW16800-A says "8639"--meaning that chip was manufactured in week 39, 1986. Notice UM6845E CRT controller. This card uses the ISA 8-bit interface. ATI Hercules Card 1986.xcf
ATI "Graphics Solution Rev 3" from 1985/1986, supporting Hercules graphics. As the PCB reveals, the layout dates from 1985, whereas the marking on the central chip CW16800-A says "8639"—meaning that chip was manufactured in week 39, 1986. Notice UM6845E CRT controller. This card uses the ISA 8-bit interface.
ATI VGA Wonder with 256 KB RAM ATI Wonder.jpg
ATI VGA Wonder with 256 KB RAM

In 1994, the Mach64 accelerator debuted, powering the Graphics Xpression and Graphics Pro Turbo, offering hardware support for YUV-to-RGB colour space conversion in addition to hardware zoom; early techniques of hardware-based video acceleration.

ATI introduced its first combination of 2D and 3D accelerator under the name 3D Rage. This chip was based on the Mach 64, but it featured elemental 3D acceleration. The ATI Rage line powered almost the entire range of ATI graphics products. In particular, the Rage Pro was one of the first viable 2D-plus-3D alternatives to 3dfx's 3D-only Voodoo chipset. 3D acceleration in the Rage line advanced from the basic functionality within the initial 3D Rage to a more advanced DirectX 6.0 accelerator in 1999 Rage 128.

The All-in-Wonder product line, introduced in 1996, was the first combination of integrated graphics chip with TV tuner card and the first chip that enabled display of computer graphics on a TV set. [6] The cards featured 3D acceleration powered by ATI's 3D Rage II, 64-bit 2D performance, TV-quality video acceleration, analogue video capture, TV tuner functionality, flicker-free TV-out and stereo TV audio reception.

ATI entered the mobile computing sector by introducing 3D-graphics acceleration to laptops in 1996. The Mobility product line had to meet requirements different from those of desktop PCs, such as minimized power usage, reduced heat output, TMDS output capabilities for laptop screens, and maximized integration. In 1997, ATI acquired Tseng Labs's graphics assets, which included 40 engineers.

The Radeon line of graphics products was unveiled in 2000. The initial Radeon graphics processing unit offered an all-new design with DirectX 7.0 3D acceleration, video acceleration, and 2D acceleration. Technology developed for a specific Radeon generation could be built in varying levels of features and performance in order to provide products suited for the entire market range, from high-end to budget to mobile versions.

In 2000, ATI acquired ArtX, which engineered the Flipper graphics chip used in the GameCube video game console. They also created a modified version of the chip (codenamed Hollywood) for the successor of the GameCube, the Wii. Microsoft contracted ATI to design the graphics core (codenamed Xenos) for the Xbox 360. Later in 2005, ATI acquired Terayon's cable modem silicon intellectual property, strengthening their lead in the consumer digital television market. [7] K. Y. Ho remained as Chairman of the Board until he retired in November 2005. Dave Orton replaced him as the President and CEO of the organization.

On July 24, 2006, a joint announcement revealed that AMD would acquire ATI in a deal valued at $5.6 billion. [8] The acquisition consideration closed on October 25, 2006, [9] and included over $2 billion financed from a loan and 56 million shares of AMD stock. [10] ATI's operations became part of the AMD Graphics Product Group (GPG), [11] and ATI's CEO Dave Orton became the Executive Vice President of Visual and Media Businesses at AMD until his resignation in 2007. [12] The top-level management was reorganized with the Senior Vice President and General Manager, and the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Consumer Electronics Group, both of whom would report to the CEO of AMD. [13] On 30 August 2010, John Trikola announced that AMD would retire the ATI brand for its graphics chipsets in favour of the AMD name. [14]

Products

ATI's fictional character & mascot Ruby Ruby (virtual character by ATI).jpg
ATI's fictional character & mascot Ruby

In addition to developing high-end GPUs (originally called a VPU, visual processing unit, by ATI) for PCs and Apple Macs, ATI also designed embedded versions for laptops (Mobility Radeon), PDAs and mobile phones (Imageon), integrated motherboards (Radeon IGP), and others.

"Ruby", a fictional female character described as a "mercenary for hire", was created by ATI to promote some of its products. [15] Computer-animated videos produced by RhinoFX about Ruby on a mission (being a sniper, saboteur, hacker and so on) appeared at large technology shows such as CeBIT and CES .

Computer graphics chipsets

Although AMD strongly considered making the functional part of the ATI drivers "open source", [18] before the merger with AMD, ATI had no plans to release their graphics drivers as free software:

Proprietary, patented optimizations are part of the value we provide to our customers and we have no plans to release these drivers to open source. In addition, multimedia elements such as content protection must not, by their very nature, be allowed to go open source.

—  ATI statement, August 2006

Personal computer platforms and chipsets

In addition to the above chipset, ATI struck a deal in 2005, with CPU and motherboard manufacturers, particularly Asus and Intel, to create onboard 3D Graphics solutions for Intel's range of motherboards released with their range of Intel Pentium M-based desktop processors, the Intel Core and Intel Core 2 processors, the D101GGC and D101GGC2 chipset (codenamed "Grand County" [21] ) based on the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset. However, high-end boards with integrated graphics processor (IGP) still used Intel GMA integrated graphics processors. The deal with Intel ended with the purchase of ATI by AMD in 2006, with Intel announcing SiS IGP chipset (D201GLY chipset, codenamed "Little Valley") for entry-level desktop platform, replacing the "Grand County" series chipsets.

Multimedia and digital TV products

Console graphics products

Handheld chipsets

Besides full products, ATI also supplied 3D and 2D graphics components to other vendors, specifically the Qualcomm [29] MSM7000 series SoC chips of handheld and upcoming Freescale i. MX processors [30] ATI claimed in May 2006, that it had sold over 100 million [31] 'cell phone media co-processors', significantly more than ATI's rival NVIDIA, and announced in February 2007, that the firm had shipped a total of 200 million of Imageon products since 2003. [32]

After the AMD acquisition, the Imageon and Xilleon were sold off to Qualcomm and Broadcom, respectively. [33] [34]

High-performance computing

See also

Competing companies

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMD</span> American multinational technology company

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that designs and develops central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), system-on-chip (SoC), and high-performance compute solutions. AMD serves a wide range of business and consumer markets, including gaming, data centers, artificial intelligence (AI), and embedded systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graphics card</span> Expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device

A graphics card is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a display device such as a monitor. Graphics cards are sometimes called discrete or dedicated graphics cards to emphasize their distinction to an integrated graphics processor on the motherboard or the central processing unit (CPU). A graphics processing unit (GPU) that performs the necessary computations is the main component in a graphics card, but the acronym "GPU" is sometimes also used to erroneously refer to the graphics card as a whole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graphics processing unit</span> Specialized electronic circuit; graphics accelerator

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit initially designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. After their initial design, GPUs were found to be useful for non-graphic calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems due to their parallel structure. Other non-graphical uses include the training of neural networks and cryptocurrency mining.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon</span> Brand of computer products

Radeon is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units, random-access memory, RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of AMD. The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006 for US$5.4 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">S3 Savage</span> Line of PC graphics chipsets by S3

Savage was a product-line of PC graphics chipsets designed by S3.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon R200 series</span> Series of video cards

The R200 is the second generation of GPUs used in Radeon graphics cards and developed by ATI Technologies. This GPU features 3D acceleration based upon Microsoft Direct3D 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Radeon R100 design. The GPU also includes 2D GUI acceleration, video acceleration, and multiple display outputs. "R200" refers to the development codename of the initially released GPU of the generation. It is the basis for a variety of other succeeding products.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diamond Multimedia</span> American company

Diamond Multimedia is an American company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards, motherboards, modems, sound cards and MP3 players; however, the company began with the production of the TrackStar, an add-on card for IBM PC compatibles which emulates Apple II computers. They were one of the major players in the 2D and early 3D graphics card competition throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMD CrossFire</span> Brand name by AMD; multi-GPU technology

AMD CrossFire is a brand name for the multi-GPU technology by Advanced Micro Devices, originally developed by ATI Technologies. The technology allows up to four GPUs to be used in a single computer to improve graphics performance.

The AMD mobile platform is an open platform for laptops from AMD. Though little marketing was done on this platform, it has been competing with the Centrino platform in the segment to gain more marketshare. Each platform has its own specification, catching up the latest technology developments. Since the acquisition of ATI, AMD began to include Mobility Radeon GPUs and AMD chipsets as part of the requirements of the mobile platform; the first of such platforms is the Puma platform.

The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) is a series of integrated graphics processors introduced in 2004 by Intel, replacing the earlier Intel Extreme Graphics series and being succeeded by the Intel HD and Iris Graphics series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon R100 series</span> Series of video cards

The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting (T&L) engine, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Rage design. The processors also include 2D GUI acceleration, video acceleration, and multiple display outputs. "R100" refers to the development codename of the initially released GPU of the generation. It is the basis for a variety of other succeeding products.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ATI Rage</span> Series of video cards

The ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets developed by ATI Technologies offering graphical user interface (GUI) 2D acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration developed by ATI Technologies. It is the successor to the ATI Mach series of 2D accelerators.

The AMD 700 chipset series is a set of chipsets designed by ATI for AMD Phenom processors to be sold under the AMD brand. Several members were launched in the end of 2007 and the first half of 2008, others launched throughout the rest of 2008.

The AMD 690 chipset series is an integrated graphics chipset family which was developed and manufactured by AMD subsidiary ATI for both AMD and Intel platforms focusing on both desktop and mobile computing markets. The corresponding chipset for the Intel platform has a marketing name of Radeon Xpress 1200 series.

The ATI Mach line was a series of 2D graphics accelerators for personal computers developed by ATI Technologies. It became an extension to the ATI Wonder series of cards. The first chip in the series was the ATI Mach8. It was essentially a clone of the IBM 8514/A with a few notable extensions such as Crystal fonts. Being one of the first graphics accelerator chips on the market, the Mach8 did not have an integrated VGA core. In order to use the first Mach8 coprocessor cards, a separate VGA card was required. This increased the cost of ownership as one had to purchase two rather than one expansion card for graphics. A temporary solution was presented with the ATI Graphics Ultra/Vantage cards, which combined an ATI 8514 Ultra and VGA Wonder+ into a single card. The Mach32 chip was the follow-up to the Mach8, which finally featured an integrated VGA core, true colour support and a 64-bit datapath to internal memory.

Unified Video Decoder is the name given to AMD's dedicated video decoding ASIC. There are multiple versions implementing a multitude of video codecs, such as H.264 and VC-1.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMD Hybrid Graphics</span> Line of discrete and integrated graphics processing units

AMD Hybrid Graphics technology, is a collective brand from AMD for its Radeon line of discrete and integrated GPU, promoting higher performance and productivity while saving energy consumption in GPUs.

The graphics processing unit (GPU) codenamed the Radeon R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000/3000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video cards developed by ATI Technologies.

The graphics processing unit (GPU) codenamed Radeon R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video cards developed by ATI Technologies. The HD 2000 cards competed with nVidia's GeForce 8 series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Imageon</span>

Imageon was a series of media coprocessors and mobile chipsets produced by ATI in 2002–2008, providing graphics acceleration and other multimedia features for handheld devices such as mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). AMD later sold the Imageon mobile handheld graphics division to Qualcomm in 2009, where it was used exclusively inside their Snapdragon SoC processors under the Adreno brand name.

References

  1. ↑ "ATI to be re-branded as AMD – branding, ATI Radeon, ati, amd – ARN". Arnnet.com.au. August 30, 2010. Retrieved February 19, 2011.
  2. ↑ University of Toronto Division of University Advancement page Archived December 10, 2008, at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved February 28, 2008.
  3. ↑ "Partner Resources". Ati.com. February 7, 2011. Archived from the original on November 3, 2002. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
  4. ↑ "The Information Technology 100: 90: ATI Technologies". BusinessWeek. 2005. Archived from the original on December 11, 2005. Retrieved August 19, 2014. The company was incorporated in August 1985 as Array Technology Inc. and changed its name to Array Technologies Inc. in September 1985. Further, it changed its name to ATI Technologies Inc. in December 1985.
  5. ↑ History of AMD at AMD.com. Archived October 12, 2007, at the Wayback Machine .
  6. ↑ History of AMD – 1996 at AMD.com. Archived October 12, 2007, at the Wayback Machine .
  7. ↑ press release Archived March 13, 2005, at the Wayback Machine
  8. ↑ "AMD 2008 10-K SEC Filling. Pg 105". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. February 24, 2009. Retrieved November 26, 2011.
  9. ↑ "Press Release". Ir.ati.com. Archived from the original on December 26, 2008. Retrieved February 19, 2011.
  10. ↑ "AMD page". Amd.com. February 10, 2011. Retrieved February 19, 2011.
  11. ↑ "AMD 2007 Analyst Day page". Amd.com. Retrieved February 19, 2011.
  12. ↑ "AMD 2006 December Analyst Day page". Amd.com. Retrieved February 19, 2011.
  13. ↑ "Corporate Information – Executive Biographies at". Amd.com. February 14, 2011. Retrieved February 19, 2011.
  14. ↑ "AMD Decides to Drop the ATI Brand – Softpedia". News.softpedia.com. Retrieved February 19, 2011.
  15. ↑ "Ruby's Headquarters at". Ati.de. January 15, 2011. Retrieved February 19, 2011.
  16. ↑ "AMD launches DirectX 11 graphics chips for laptops". techworld.com. January 8, 2010. Archived from the original on August 20, 2014. Retrieved January 8, 2010.
  17. ↑ "DailyTech report". Dailytech.com. Archived from the original on August 10, 2011. Retrieved February 19, 2011.
  18. ↑ Yager, Tom (August 2, 2006). "'AMD talks about ATI' at". Infoworld.com. Retrieved February 19, 2011.
  19. ↑ Gavrichenkov, Ilya. ATI RADEON 9100 IGP Integrated Chipset Review Archived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine , X-bit Labs, December 1, 2003.
  20. ↑ Wasson, Scott. ATI's Radeon Xpress 200 chipset Archived May 10, 2007, at the Wayback Machine , Tech Report, November 8, 2004.
  21. ↑ Intel Boxed Desktop Board Quick Guide (December 2006)
  22. ↑ "ATI Revolutionizes the Multimedia PC Experience with ALL-IN-WONDER 9600 PRO". hartware.de. August 5, 2003. Retrieved March 12, 2024.
  23. ↑ "Hardware Behind the Consoles - Part II: Nintendo's GameCube Page 3". anandtech.com. December 7, 2001. Retrieved March 12, 2024.
  24. ↑ "Hardware Behind the Consoles - Part II: Nintendo's GameCube Page 5". anandtech.com. December 7, 2001. Retrieved March 12, 2024.
  25. ↑ "Ex. 2050 - R400 Document Library FH - folder_history (PROTECTIVE ORDER) — IPR2015-00325 - LG Electronics, Inc. v. ATI Technologies ULC". Unified Patents. September 9, 2015. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
  26. ↑ "Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PS3 - A Hardware Discussion". anandtech.com. June 24, 2005. Retrieved March 12, 2024.
  27. ↑ "ATI's Radeon 8500: First GPU With Hardware Tessellation". electronicdesign.com. January 26, 2022. Retrieved March 12, 2024.
  28. ↑ "AMD Ships 50 Millionth 'Hollywood' GPU In Wii". hothardware.com. March 11, 2009. Retrieved March 12, 2024.
  29. ↑ page 10 and 15. Archived September 26, 2007, at the Wayback Machine .
  30. ↑ DailyTech report. Archived August 19, 2016, at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved September 17, 2007.
  31. ↑ "The Inquirer report". Theinquirer.net. Archived from the original on August 14, 2007. Retrieved February 19, 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  32. ↑ AMD press release. Archived March 15, 2009, at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved July 27, 2007.
  33. ↑ "NVIDIA and Qualcomm ARM Up Against Competitors". bdti.com. October 18, 2011. Retrieved March 12, 2024.
  34. ↑ "Coup at AMD: Why was Dirk Meyer Pushed Out?". brightsideofnews.com. January 10, 2011. Retrieved March 12, 2024.
  35. ↑ "AMD Delivers First Stream Processor with Double Precision Floating Point Technology". AMD. November 8, 2007. Retrieved February 12, 2015.
  36. ↑ "R.I.P: FireStream (2006 - 2012)". AnandTech. August 14, 2012. Retrieved February 12, 2015.

43°50′20″N79°22′48″W / 43.83889°N 79.38000°W / 43.83889; -79.38000

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.