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ATI Technologies U.L.C. ATI is a major Canadian designer and supplier of Graphics Processing Unit s, motherboard Chipsets , and Video Display Cards . ATI is a canonical Fabless Semiconductor Company , conducts Research And Development in-house, but subcontracts manufacturing and assembly to third-parties. Originally formed in 1985, in October 2006 they were purchased by AMD . In recent years, they have been involved in a constant battle for market share of the "high end" graphics cards market with NVIDIA . As of 2004 , ATI's flagship product line is the Radeon series of graphics cards which directly compete with NVIDIA's GeForce . The two companies' dominance of the market has forced other vendors into niche roles. CORPORATE OVERVIEW ATI was founded under the name Array Technologies Incorporated in 1985 by three Chinese immigrants, -born Benny Lau and Lee Lau . Array Technologies primarily worked in the OEM field, producing integrated Video Display Cards for large PC manufacturers like IBM . By 1987 it had evolved into an independent graphics card retailer, marketing the EGA Wonder and VGA Wonder Video Display Cards under its own ATI moniker. office.]] In 1997 ATI acquired replaced him as the President and CEO of the organization. On July 24 , 2006 , AMD and ATI announced a plan to Merge together in a deal valued at US$5.4 billion. The merger closed October 25, 2006. Press Release The acquisition consideration included over $2 billion financed from a loan, as well as 56 million shares of AMD stock. AMD page ATI retained its name, logos, and trademarks. The former CEO of ATI Dave Orton was appointed be the Executive Vice President (VP) of Visual and Media Businesses AMD 2006 December Analyst Day page . Ten months after completion of acquisition, in July 2007, AMD announced the resignation of Dave Orton, with "mixed feelings." On the other hand, ATI, renamed as the Division of Visual and Media Businesses, being a subsidiary of AMD after the purchase, was obviously renamed as Graphics Products Group AMD 2007 Analyst Day page , and the position of the leader of Graphics Products Group will be filled by Rick Bergman, as Senior Vice President , General Manager of the Graphics Products Group, and Adrian Hartog, Senior Vice President, who continues to lead the Consumer Electronics Group. Both directly report to Dirk Meyer , CEO of AMD . MARKET HISTORY ATI initially shipped basic 2D graphics chips to companies such as Commodore . The ''EGA Wonder'' and ''VGA Wonder'' families were released to the PC market in 1987. Each offered enhanced feature sets surpassing IBM's own ( EGA and VGA ) display adapters. During the early 1990s, ATI continued to develop various 2D GUI accelerator cards that primarily targeted the Microsoft platforms. May of 1991 saw the release of the '' Mach8 '' product, ATI's first " Windows accelerator" product. Windows accelerators offloaded display-processing tasks which had been performed by the CPU . (In fact, the ''Mach8'' was a feature-enhanced IBM 8514/A-compatible board.) 1992 saw the release of the ''Mach32'' chipset, offering improved memory bandwidth and GUI acceleration performance. In 1994, the ''Mach 64'' accelerator, powering the ''Graphics Xpression'' and ''Graphics Pro Turbo'', was ATI's first recognizably modern media chipset. It offered hardware support for YUV-to-RGB Color Space conversion in addition to hardware zoom, early pieces of hardware-based video acceleration. As consumer-oriented 3D Acceleration became feasible in the middle of the 1990s, ATI developed a combination 2D & 3D accelerator. Known as the '' 3D Rage '', this initial chip was based heavily upon the ''Mach 64'', but with limited 3D acceleration added. The ''Rage'' line would span the rest of the 1990s, powering almost the entire range of ATI graphics products. The '' Rage Pro '' was one of the first viable 2D/3D competitors for the 3D-only '' 3dfx Voodoo '' chipset. ATI 3D acceleration in the ''Rage'' line advanced from the basic functionality within the initial ''3D Rage'' to a much more advanced DirectX 6.0 accelerator in the 1999 '' Rage 128 ''. ATI broke new ground in integration in 1996 with their ''All-in-Wonder'' product line. These featured 3D acceleration powered by ATI's second generation ''3D Rage II'', 64-bit 2D performance, TV-quality video acceleration, video capture, TV tuner functionality, flicker-free TV-out and stereo TV audio. Also during the time of the ''Rage'' products, ATI made a successful entrance into the mobile computing sector. With products such as the '' Rage Mobility '', ATI was part of the establishment of 3D acceleration on notebook PCs. These products had to meet requirements much different than desktop products, such as minimized power usage, TDMS output capabilities for laptop screens, and maximized integration due to the compact nature of mobile and embedded designs. In 2000, the '' Radeon '' line of graphics products was unveiled. A ''Radeon'' visual processing unit (VPU), as ATI called it, was a processor with DirectX 7 3D acceleration, video acceleration, and the ubiquitous 2D GUI acceleration. The line received updates and new architectures throughout the 2000s. It has supported DirectX 7 through DirectX 10, as of 2007, in addition to video processing enhancements for burgeoning High-definition Video formats. The ''Radeon'' products were also instrumental in moving to a "top-to-bottom" approach to Market Segmentation . The technology developed for a specific ''Radeon'' generation could be built in varying levels of robustness, in order to provide products suited for the entire market range, from the extreme high-end, to ''Mobility Radeon'' products, and to the lowest-cost budget application. Later generations expanded this to include flexibility for easy construction of both integrated and discrete parts from the same technology.TeamB3D. Sir Eric Demers on AMD R600 , Beyond3D, June 14, 2007: p.3. PRODUCTS In addition to developing high-end GPU s (''graphics processing unit'', something ATI once called a VPU, ''visual processing unit'') for PCs, ATI also designs embedded versions for laptops (called "Mobility Radeon"), PDA s and Mobile Phone s (" Imageon "), integrated motherboards ("Radeon IGP"), Set-top Box es (" Xilleon ") and other technology-based market segments. Thanks to this diverse portfolio, ATI has been traditionally the dominant player in the OEM and multimedia markets. ATI promotes some of its products with the fictional "Ruby" character. Computer graphics chipsets
Personal computer platforms & chipsets See Also: Comparison of ATI chipsets Comparison of AMD chipsets
Intel IGP chipset deal In addition to the above chipset ATI has announced that a deal has been struck with CPU and Motherboard manufacturers as of 2005, particularly Asus and Intel , to create onboard 3D Graphics solutions for Intel 's new range of motherboards that will be 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 Country''" ) based on the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset. However, high-end boards with integrated graphics processor (IGP) will still use Intel Integrated Graphics Processor s. The deal with Intel was deemed to be officially ended with the purchase of ATI Technologies from AMD in July 2006, with Intel announcing SiS IGP chipset (D201GLY chipset, codenamed "''Little Valley''") for entry-level desktop platform, replacing the "''Grand Country''" series chipsets. Multimedia and Digital TV solutions
Console graphics solutions
Handheld chipsets
High Performance Computing
OPERATING SYSTEM DRIVERS See also: Radeon ATI currently provides proprietary Drivers for Microsoft Windows Vista , Windows XP , Mac OS X , and Linux . Linux users have the option of both the old proprietary (R200 and above) and new open source (R480 and below) drivers. In an interview with AMD official Hal Speed it was suggested that AMD were strongly considering making at least a functional part of the ATI drivers open source. {Link without Title} . However, at least until the merger with AMD was complete, ATI had no plans to release their drivers as open source code: As of July 2007, Mobility Radeon drivers have not been released by ATI for Windows Vista . The in-the-box drivers from Microsoft that these chips will use do not have a native OpenGL ICD included. They instead use Microsoft's OpenGL to Direct3D translation layer which is not as fast as an native OpenGL driver. However, this is an improvement from Windows XP and prior Windows operating systems which did not include any sort of hardware OpenGL support. A solution to the lack of official Vista Mobility Raden drivers is to use the Mod Tool to modify desktop Radeon drivers to install for Mobility Radeon chips. On September 06, 2007, AMD announced that it will make code and specifications for ATI graphics cards available, AMD confirmed that everything necessary for community driven and maintained 2D and 3D drivers for ATI Radeon X1000, HD 2000, and newer graphics will be made available. The firm will release documentation that allows third part developers to build and support their own drivers. {Link without Title} {Link without Title} {Link without Title} SEE ALSO
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