AMD or Advanced Micro Devices is a multinational semiconductor company. It produces products like microprocessors, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors, and graphics processing units. This company has it’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, U.S.A. It manufactures products for servers, workstations, personal computers, and many more.
It is now practicing a method called fabless manufacturing, where they outsourced their fabrication to a specialized manufacturer. It is a public company. It serves worldwide, and it is traded as NASDAQ: AMD, NASDAQ 100 component, and S&P 500 component. It’s International Securities Identification Number (ISIN) is US0079031078.
Inception
Jerry Sanders founded advanced Micro Devices on 1st May 1969. He left his previous company Fairchild along with his seven of his colleagues as they were getting frustrated with their old job and wanted to start something on their own. So they founded AMD, their own semiconductor company. In 1968, another semiconductor company Intel was founded by Sander’s colleague Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore.
AMD, after moving to Sunnyvale in September 1969, was in high demand among the public as it provided high reliability in microchips. It also supplied products with quality that matched with the United States Military Standard.
Am9300, which was a 4-bit MSI Shift register, was the first product manufactured by the company in November 1969. It also made the fastest multiplier available called Am2505, which was it’s a best seller during 1971.
1971 was a critical year for the company as it released their first RAM chip called Am3101, a 64-bit bipolar RAM which became popular and that gave AMD developers an idea to increase their sales volume. By the end of 1971, they had $4.6 million in their total annual sales.
AMD also paired with Intel and delivered them products like Am14/1506 and Am14/1507 by 1973, one year after they went public. AMD started to make more and more products, and by the end of 1975, it produced around 212 products, 49 products being proprietary.
Am9080 helped AMD to enter the microprocessor market in 1975, four years later than Intel, who entered the market and made its first microprocessor in 1971. Am9080 had some similarities with Intel’s 8080 as it was the reverse-engineered clone of the Intel’s product. Intel granted copyright license to AMD for the microcode in its microprocessors when it entered into a cross-licensing agreement with AMD while installing microcode in microprocessors in 1976.
AMD partnered with Siemens in 1977 with the hope of entering the U.S. market. AMD’s 20% stock was brought by Siemens, which gave AMD enough money to expand its horizons and make more products. In 1977, Advanced Micro Computers partnered with AMD and Siemens, which helped AMD in entering the manufacturing field. But, their partnership didn’t last long, and because of different ideas, AMD broke their deal with Siemens in 1979 and with Advanced Micro Computers in 1981. AMD then concentrated entirely on the making of Intel x86 microprocessors.
Due to an increase in their sales in 1978 and reaching upto $100 million in their total sales, they debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in 1979. AMD entered the telecommunication industry in 1980 and supplied semiconductors for them.
Evolution
AMD brought ATI Technologies, a graphic processor company on 24th July 2006, for $4.3 billion in cash and 58 million shares of its stock. AMD also changed the ATI brand name to its brand name in its graphic chipsets.
AMD made a new venture called GlobalFoundries Inc. with Advanced Technology Investment Co. The money by this new venture helped AMD to invest it in chip design and make it better for the public. Dirk Meyer replaced Hector Ruiz as the CEO of the company in March 2009.
Rory Read replaced Meyer in August 2011, which led to 10% lay off of the company’s employees from all the divisions. SeaMicro was introduced in AMD during early 2012 for the improvement in the architecture server chip.
Rory Read was soon replaced by the current CEO, Lisa Su, in 2014, the same year when AMD introduced a new restructuring plan.
Awards & Achievements
AMD has made many products that have helped people to access technology easily. It specializes in many making many products for various industries. It has no awards in its name, but it has manufactured many items that is used in the present date also.
Net Worth of AMD in 2024
As of January 2024, It has a net worth of $6 billion; It has a net income of $6.73 billion. It has an operating income of $341 million and total assets of $6.028 billion. It has total equity of $2.87 billion.
AMD is one of the largest microdevice company that has taken the technology world by a wave. It has made many products since it’s inception and has created products for a famous software company Intel. It has always worked on newer technology and is successful in making devices that is a blessing for today’s technology orientated world.