Advanced Micro Devices

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Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American worldwide semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California, United States, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While initially it manufactured its own processors, the company became fabless after GlobalFoundries was spun off in 2009. AMD's main products include microprocessors, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors and graphics processors for servers, workstations and personal computers, and embedded systems applications.
Advanced Micro Devices was formally incorporated on May 1, 1969, by Jerry Sanders, along with seven of his colleagues from Fairchild Semiconductor. Sanders, an electrical engineer who was the director of marketing at Fairchild, had like many Fairchild executives grown frustrated with the increasing lack of support, opportunity, and flexibility within that company, and decided to leave to start his own semiconductor company.

Processor History

• IBM PC and the x86 architecture
• K5, K6, Athlon, Duron and Sempron
• Athlon 64, Opteron and Phenom
• Fusion, Bobcat, Bulldozer, Vishera, and Hondo

     For the entire list See List of AMD Microprocessors.

Products and technologies

• Graphics Products
• Radeon – Brand for consumer line of graphics cards.
• AMD FirePro – Brand for professional line of graphics cards for workstations.
• AMD FireStream – Brand for discontinued product line targeting stream processing and GPGPU as used in various industries.
• AMD FireMV – Brand for discontinued product line targeting multi-monitor setups in professional environments.
• As of 2015^[update] technologies found in AMD products include:
• AMD Eyefinity – Facilitates multi-monitor setup of up to 6 monitors per graphics card
• AMD TrueAudio – Acceleration of audio calculations
• Unified Video Decoder (UVD) – Acceleration of video decoding
• Video Coding Engine (VCE) – Acceleration of video encoding
• AMD chipsets
• AMD Live!
• AMD Quad FX platform
• Server platform
• Desktop platforms
• Embedded systems

Litigation

• 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, the court has issued subpoenas to major computer manufacturers including Acer, Dell, Lenovo, HP and Toshiba.
• In November 2009, Intel agreed to pay AMD $1.25bn and renew a five-year patent cross-licensing agreement as part of a deal to settle all outstanding legal disputes between them.

Record Achievement

On August 31, 2011, in Austin, Texas, AMD achieved a Guinness World Record for the "Highest frequency of a computer processor": 8.429 GHz. The company ran an 8-core FX-8150 processor with only one active module (two cores), and cooled with liquid helium. The previous record was 8.308 GHz, with an Intel Celeron 352 (one core).