ATI Technologies, Inc.

History of ATI

 
  

ATI or Array Technologies Incorporated (as it was known as when it was founded) was founded in 1985 by Lee Ka Lau, Benny Lay and Kwok Yuen Ho, ATI was created with the plan to provide OEM products to larger retailers. For the next couple years ATI worked primarily in the OEM sector and produced integrated graphic cards for manufacturers like IBM and Commodore, this soon changed because by 1987 ATI had grown so large that it was now an Independent Graphic Card Retailer, Developer and Manufacturer in that same year ATI unveiled the EGA Wonder and WGA Wonder product lines. As ATI grew steadily in popularity amongst OEM partners and system builders they kept advancing their technologies, for the next three or four years ATI didn't release very many new products, instead they spent time developing a Graphics Processing Unit that didn't need the CPU to operate.
 

Four years (May 1991 to be exact) after unveiling there EGA / WGA Wonder Graphic Chips ATI unleashed a terrible beast known as the Mach8, this was ATI's first product that was capable of processing graphical data without the CPU, this was the foundation for every ATI video card for years to come. In 1992 ATI released another Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) known as the Mach32, the Mach32 improved on the Mach8 offering higher memory bandwith and Improved GUI Acceleration. The Mach family of ATI products grew steadily for a while, ATI had a total of eight "Mach" Releases spanning from 1991 to 1994, the final product in the Mach series of Graphic Processing Units was the Mach-GT, also known as the 3D Rage. During the time that ATI had been expanding and releasing new Mach GPU's Array Technologies Incorporated had gone public and changed it's name officially too ATI Technologies Inc, around the same time ATI Technologies stock became listed at NASDAQ and the Toronto Stock Exchange.
 

From 1994 and on ATI Technologies Inc, released a number of "Rage" products, these Graphic Processing Units became ATI's first GPU combination 2D and 3D accelerator, it was entitled the "3D Rage", the 3D Rage was based on the Mach64 but it featured the addition of "Elemental 3D Acceleration". For years the ATI Rage Line of products powered almost everything ATI offered for graphical processing products. During the advancement of the Rage product line ATI had unveiled it's All-In-Wonder product line, these products featured a Graphics Processing Chip and a TV Tuner Card allowing people to watch television with All-In-Wonder Video Cards. In addition to the TV Tuner the All-In-Wonder series of products introduced the following features. Ability to use a TV as a monitor, Analog Video Capture, TV Tuner Functionality, TV-out and stereo audio reception.
 

a year or two after the All-In-Wonder had taken off ATI Technologies released the "Rage Pro", the Rage Pro was the first viable 2D and 3D alternative to 3Dfx's 3D-only Voodoo Chipset. In 1996 - 1997 ATI Technologies had also penetrated the Mobile Computer Market by introducing 3D Graphic Processing Units into laptops, the difference between the Desktop Rage series and the new Mobile "Rage" based GPU's was the lower power usage, reduced heat output and TMDS output for laptop screens, the chip was also completed integrated into the Motherboard, you couldn't remove it at all making upgrading impossible. Additionally in 1997 ATI acquired Tseng Lab's which eventually led to the advancement of the Rage 128 and Radeon series of products, Tseng Labs brought 39 - 42 engineers with them.
 

By 1999 the Rage products had advanced from the basic functions they used to be used for to a far more advanced DirectX 6.0 accelerator type Graphic Processing Unit, the last product in the Rage line of products was the Rage 128 which was the worlds first DirectX 6.0 Graphics Processing Unit. In 2000 ATI Technologies had grown rather large and had made a name for itself around the GPU communities, with the Release of the Radeon line of products in 2000 new technologies such as DirectX 7.0 3D Acceleration, Video Acceleration, Improved 2D Acceleration had been implemented into their new products. This is also when ATI started to release products geared towards different markets by offering more or less Features and Performance based on price, the higher priced Graphic Cards ATI manufactured offered all of the newest features while the lower priced ATI graphic cards offered some of the new technologies with a lot of old technology.
 

In Q3 2000 ATI purchased ArtX, ArtX was responsible for engineering the Flipper Graphic Processing Chips, these where used in Nintendo GameCubes around the world and resulted in ATI holding a place as one of the most popular Graphic Processing Unit manufacturers / developers for Desktops, Laptops, OEM Partners and now consoles. Around the same time as the ArtX acquisition Microsoft contacted ATI in the hopes of having ArtX / ATI Technologies produce OEM Graphic Processing Chips for a Next-Gen console known as the Xbox 360, ATI agreed and began developing the Xenos Graphic Processing Chip that they would sell to Microsoft in OEM batches. ATI released Radeon Products throughout the whole time this was happening and started to acquire Terayon Cable Modern Silicon Intellectual Property which only increased there lead over other manufacturers in the Digital Television Market. In that same year Kwok Yuen Ho retired and Dave Orton a person who had been brought to the company only 5 years earlier with the purchase of ArtX had gone from the President and CEO of ArtX to the President and CEO of ATI Technologies.
 

On July 24, 2006 with Dave Orton leading them AMD went through with plans to purchase ATI completely for a deal that was valued at over $5.4 billion dollars, the merge was completed by October 25, 2006 and had resulted in ATI losing $2 Billion dollars to fiance a loan for 56 million shares of AMD stock. After the merger was complete Dave Orton CEO of ATI Technologies was made the Executive Vice President of Visual and Media Business for AMD / ATI, he was also responsible for the subpoenas in the Antitrust suit against nVidia for unlawful business practices. Dave Orton resigned in 2007, only 10 months after becoming the Vice President of Visual and Media Business so he could spend more time with his family, it was noted that he was not seeking new employment.
 

ATI Radeon Product Line

 

ATI Technologies currently still working on the Radeon product line, the Radeon series of graphic cards offer amazing performance for a cheaper cost when compared to competitor nVidia's graphic cards, with the release of the 5xxx series of Radeon Card's ATI technologies has become the performance king, it's HD 5970 Dual-GPU video card is currently the best single Video Card in the world. Below is a list of the current offered ATI Radeon Series Graphic Processing Unit's, they're in order from the most recent to the least recent.
 
 
 
 
Radeon 5900 Series
Radeon 5800 Series
Radeon 5700 Series
Radeon 4890 Series
Radeon 4800 Series
Radeon 4770 Series
Radeon 4700 Series
Radeon 4600 Series
Radeon 4500 Series
Radeon 4350 Series
Radeon 4000 Series
Radeon 3870 Series
Radeon 3850 Series
Radeon 3600 Series
Radeon 3400 Series
Radeon 3000 Series
Radeon 2900 Series
Radeon 2400 Series
Radeon 2000 Series
Radeon X1950 Series
Radeon x1900 Series
Radeon x1800 Series
Radeon x1650 Series
Radeon x1600 Series
Radeon x1550 Series
Radeon x1300 Series
Radeon x1050 Series
Radeon x850 Series
Radeon x800 Series
Radeon x700 Series
Radeon x600 Series
Radeon x550 Series
Radeon x300 Series
Radeon 9800 Series
Radeon 9700 Series
Radeon 9600 Series
Radeon 9550 Series
Radeon 9500 Series
Radeon 9200 Series
Radeon 9000 Series
Radeon 8500 Series
Radeon 7500 Series
Radeon 7200 Series
Radeon 7000 Series
Radeon VE Series
 
Compare ATI Chipsets on this chart

Useful ATI Links

 
FGLRX: ATI Drivers for Linux Based Systems
ATI Community: News, Blog, Deals, Sales, etc
ATI Driver Website