The acquisition of ATI in 2006 was important to AMD's strategic development of itsFusion series ofcomputer 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 flagshipRadeon graphics processor products with its branding instead.[1]
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 theOEM field, ATI produced integrated graphics cards for PC manufacturers such asIBM andCommodore. 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 andGUI acceleration. ATI Technologies Inc. went public in 1993, with shares listed onNASDAQ and on theToronto Stock Exchange.
ATI's former Silicon Valley office at 4555 Great America Pkwy, Santa Clara, CAATI "Graphics Solution Rev 3" from 1985/1986, supportingHercules graphics. As thePCB reveals, the layout dates from 1985, whereas the marking on the central chipCW16800-A says "8639"—meaning that chip was manufactured in week 39, 1986. NoticeUM6845E CRT controller. This card uses theISA 8-bit interface.ATI VGA Wonder with 256 KB RAM
In 1994, the Mach64 accelerator debuted, powering the Graphics Xpression and Graphics Pro Turbo, offering hardware support forYUV-to-RGBcolour space conversion in addition to hardware zoom; early techniques of hardware-based video acceleration.
ATI introduced its first combination of 2D and3D accelerator under the name3D 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, theRage Pro was one of the first viable 2D-plus-3D alternatives to3dfx's 3D-only Voodoo chipset. 3D acceleration in the Rage line advanced from the basic functionality within the initial 3D Rage to a more advancedDirectX 6.0 accelerator in 1999Rage 128.
TheAll-in-Wonder product line, introduced in 1996, was the first combination of integrated graphics chip withTV 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 RageII, 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 acquiredTseng Labs's graphics assets, which included 40 engineers.
TheRadeon line of graphics products was unveiled in 2000. The initial Radeongraphics 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 acquiredArtX, which engineered theFlipper graphics chip used in theGameCube video game console. They also created a modified version of the chip (codenamedHollywood) for the successor of the GameCube, theWii.Microsoft contracted ATI to design the graphics core (codenamedXenos) for theXbox 360. Later in 2005, ATI acquiredTerayon's cable modemsilicon 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 thatAMD wouldacquire 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]
In addition to developing high-endGPUs (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 asCeBIT andCES.
Mach Series – Introduced ATI's first2DGUI "Windows Accelerator". As the series evolved, GUI acceleration improved dramatically and early video acceleration appeared.
Rage Series – ATI's first 2D and3D accelerator chips. The series evolved from rudimentary 3D with 2D GUI acceleration andMPEG-1 capability, to a highly competitiveDirect3D 6 accelerator with then "best-in-class" DVD (MPEG2) acceleration. The various chips were very popular withOEMs of the time. The Rage II was used in the first ATIAll-In-Wonder multi-function video card, and more advanced All-In-Wonders based on Rage series GPUs followed. (1995–2004)
Rage Mobility – Designed for use in low-power environments, such as notebooks. These chips were functionally similar to their desktop counterparts but had additions such as advancedpower management,LCD interfaces, anddual monitor functionality.
Radeon Series – ATI launched the Radeon line in 2000, as their consumer 3D accelerator add-in cards, its flagship product line and the direct competitor to Nvidia'sGeForce. The originalRadeon DDR was ATI's first DirectX 7 3D accelerator, introducing their first hardwareT&L engine. ATI often produced 'Pro' versions with higher clock speeds, and sometimes an extreme 'XT' version, and even more recently 'XT Platinum Edition (PE)' and 'XTX' versions. The Radeon series was the basis for many ATI All-In-Wonder boards.
Mobility Radeon – A series of power-optimized versions of Radeon graphics chips for use in laptops. They introduced innovations such as modularized RAM chips, DVD (MPEG2) acceleration, notebook GPU card sockets, and "PowerPlay" power management technology. AMD recently announced DirectX 11-compatible versions of its mobile processors.[16]
ATI CrossFire – This technology was ATI's response toNVIDIA'sSLI platform. It allowed, by using a secondary video card and a dual PCI-E motherboard based on an ATI Crossfire compatible chipset, the ability to combine the power of the two, three or four video cards to increase performance through a variety of different rendering options. There is an option for additional PCI-E video card plugging into the third PCI-E slot for gaming physics, or another option to do physics on the second video card.[17]
FireGL/FirePro – Launched in 2001, following ATI's acquisition of FireGL Graphics fromDiamond Multimedia. Workstation CAD/CAM video card, based on the Radeon series.
FireMV – For workstations, featuring "multi-view", for multiple displays with 2D acceleration only, usually based on low-end products of the Radeon series (now integrated into FirePro series).
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.
9100 IGP – 2nd generation system chipset. IXP250 southbridge. It was notable for being ATI's first complete motherboard chipset, including an ATI-built southbridge. It included an updated DirectX 8.1 class graphics processor[19]
In addition to the above chipset, ATI struck a deal in 2005, withCPU andmotherboard manufacturers, particularlyAsus andIntel, to create onboard 3D Graphics solutions forIntel's range of motherboards released with their range ofIntelPentium M-based desktop processors, theIntel Core andIntel Core 2 processors, the D101GGC and D101GGC2 chipset (codenamed "Grand County"[21]) based on theRadeon Xpress 200 chipset. However, high-end boards with integrated graphics processor (IGP) still usedIntel GMAintegrated graphics processors. The deal with Intel ended with the purchase of ATI by AMD in 2006, with Intel announcingSiS IGP chipset (D201GLY chipset, codenamed "Little Valley") for entry-level desktop platform, replacing the "Grand County" series chipsets.
All-in-Wonder series – A series of multimedia graphics cards which incorporating TV tuner andRadeon familygraphics cards onto one add-in card,[22] which, after being seemingly discontinued was relaunched as All-in-Wonder HD on June 26, 2008.
TV tuners
TV Wonder andHDTV Wonder – a chipset family providing TV reception of various analogue TV and digital TV signals (PAL,NTSC,ATSC,DVB-T and so on) with first generationAVIVO technology, also supportingCableCARD, andClear QAM technologies.
Theater – a family ofQAM andVSB demodulators for the Digital Cable ready andATSC environments.
Remote Wonder, wireless remote control series for ATI multimedia products. Operates using radio frequency, away from mainstream implementations usinginfrared.
Flipper – TheGameCube (codenamed "dolphin" during production) contains a 3D accelerator developed byArtX, Inc, a company acquired by ATI during the development of the GPU.[23] Flipper was similar in capability to aDirect3D 7 accelerator chip. It consisted of four rendering pipelines, with hardwareT&L, and some limited pixelshader support. Innovatively the chip has 3 MB of embedded1T-SRAM for use as ultra-fast low-latency (6.2 ns) texture andframebuffer/Z-buffer storage allowing 10.4GB/second bandwidth (extremely fast for the time).[24] Flipper was designed by members of theNintendo 64 Reality Coprocessor team who moved from SGI. The Flipper team went on to have a major hand in the development of theRadeon 9700.
Xenos –Microsoft'sXbox 360 video game console contains a custom graphics chip produced by ATI, known as "R400", "C1", internally as "Crayola",[25] or more often asXenos. Some of these features include the embedded DRAM (eDRAM). The Xenos also features the “True Unified Shader Architecture” which dynamically loads and balances pixel and vertex processing amongst a bank of identically capable processing units.[26] This differs greatly from PC graphics chips of previous generations that have separate banks of processors designed for their individual task (vertex/fragment). Another feature presented in Xenos is the hardwaresurface tessellation to divide a surface into smaller triangles,[27] similar toTruForm in terms of functionality, which is an advanced feature as it is not presented even in theDirectX 10 specification. The recent generationRadeon R600 GPU core inherited most of the features presented in Xenos, excepteDRAM.
Imageon –System-on-a-chip (SoC) design introduced in 2002, to bring integrated2D and3D graphics to handhelds devices, mobile phones andTablet PCs. The Imageon 2298 included DVD quality recording and playback, TV output, and supported up to a 12-megapixel camera, with another line of Imageon products, the 2300 series supportingOpenGL ES 1.1+ extensions. The Imageon line was rebranded under AMD asAdreno, and sold toQualcomm in 2009.
Imageon TV – Announced in February 2006, allowing handhelds devices to receive digital broadcast TV (DVB-H) signals and enables watching TV programs on these devices, the chipset includes tuner, demodulator, decoder, and a full software stack, operates alongside theImageon chip.
Besides full products, ATI also supplied 3D and 2D graphics components to other vendors, specifically theQualcomm[29]MSM7000 series SoC chips of handheld and upcomingFreescale 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 andBroadcom, respectively.[33][34]
ATI Firestream, using thestream processing concept, together withClose to Metal (CTM) hardware interface. After the AMD acquisition, it was succeeded byAMD FireStream in 2006, rebranded as AMD Stream Processor until 2012.[35][36]
^"The Information Technology 100: 90: ATI Technologies".BusinessWeek. 2005. Archived fromthe original on December 11, 2005. RetrievedAugust 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.
.jpg)
