Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (or AMD according to abbreviationfinder.org) is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of x86-compatible microprocessors (along with Intel) and one of the largest manufacturers of CPUs, GPUs, chipsets, and other semiconductor devices.
Summary
The evolution of humanity and in particular of electronics in recent years has been based on constant advances in chip manufacturing. Integrated circuits have been incorporated into everything around us to the point that life without them seems impossible.
The microprocessor it is one of the most outstanding achievements of the 20th century. Those are bold words, and a quarter of a century ago such a claim would have seemed absurd. But each year, the microprocessor moves closer to the center of our lives, carving out a place at the core of one machine after another. His presence has begun to change the way we perceive the world and even ourselves. microprocessor as another simple product in a long line of technological innovations.
Although we recognize the penetration of the microprocessor in our lives, we are already growing indifferent to the presence of those thousands of tiny machines that we find ourselves unknowingly every day. So before it becomes too imperceptibly integrated into our daily existence, now is the time to celebrate the microprocessor and the revolution it has spawned,
History
Advanced Micro Devices was founded on 1 maypole in 1969 by a group of executives from Fairchild Semiconductor, including Jerry Sanders III, Ed Turney, John Carey, Sven Simonsen, Jack Gifford and three members of the team Gifford, Frank Botte, Jim Giles and Larry Stenger. The company began producing logic integrated circuits, then entered the RAM business in 1975. That same year he made an Intel 8080 microprocessor clone using reverse engineering techniques.
During this period, AMD also designed and produced a series of Bit slicing processors (Am2901, Am29116, Am293xx) that were used in various microcomputer designs. During that time, AMD tried to change the perception of RISC with its AMD 29k processors and tried to diversify it by introducing graphics and video units as well as EPROM memories.
This was successful in the mid- 1980s with the AMD7910 and AMD7911, some of the first units to support various standards both Bell and CCITT at 1200 baud half duplex or 300/300 full duplex. The AMD 29k survived as an embedded processor and the AMD Spin-off Spansion became a leader in flash memory production. AMD decides to change course and focus solely on Intel-compatible microprocessors, putting it directly in competition with Intel and targeting flash memory for secondary markets. AMD announces the acquisition of ATI Technologies on July 24, 2006. AMD pays 4.3 billion dollars in cash and 58 million in shares for a total of 5.4 billion.
Internal microprocessor
The modern microprocessor contains about 20 million transistors, and each finished chip is the product of more complicated processes than those used in the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. And yet, despite an extraordinarily refined manufacturing process, microchips are produced in volume at more than 1 billion units per year. To put this complexity in perspective, Imagine that within each tiny microprocessor exists a structure as complex as a medium-sized city, including all of its power lines, telephone lines, sewer lines, buildings, streets, and houses. Now imagine that in that same city, millions of people move at the speed of light and in perfect timing in a very complicated choreographed dance. And that’s just a chip. Of all the astonishing statistics used to describe the world of the microprocessor, none is more extraordinary than this: the total number of transistors that make up all the microchips that will be produced in the world this year is equivalent to the number of raindrops that will fall. in California during that same period.
Best Designs
AMD64 / K8 Dual-core Athlon 64 X2 Athlon II and Phenom II
Future projects
Bulldozer and BobcatAMD FusionAMD Danube (AMD plans to release 3- and 4-core notebook processors in summer 2010 that will compete with intel’s i7 QMs.)
Other Platforms
AMD / ATI: After completing the purchase of ATI in 2006, AMD restructures itself as the only company in the world that provides a range of solutions in all lines of microprocessors, graphics cards and chipsets. Thus it also becomes the world’s largest producer of chips for TV, consoles and mobile telephony in the world, with this AMD today becomes the biggest rival of Intel in terms of semiconductor solutions.
