Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

(AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in

Sunnyvale, California, United States, that develops computer processors and related technologies for
business and consumer markets.
the company became fabless after GlobalFoundries was spun off in 2009
AMD's main products include microprocessors, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors and
graphics processors for servers, workstations and personal computers, and embedded systems
applications.
AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture and also
one of the largest suppliers of graphics processing units. It also owns 8.6% of Spansion, a supplier of
non-volatile flash memory
AMD is the only significant rival to Intel in the central processor (CPU) market for (x86 based) personal
computers. Since acquiring ATI in 2006, AMD and its competitor Nvidia have dominated the discrete
graphics processor unit (GPU) market.
Advanced Micro Devices was founded on May 1, 1969,
[8]
by a group of former executives from Fairchild
Semiconductor, including Jerry Sanders III, Ed Turney, John Carey, Sven Simonsen, Jack Gifford and three
members from Gifford's team, Frank Botte, Jim Giles, and Larry Stenger.
The company began as a producer of logic chips, then entered the RAM chip business in 1975.
That same year, it introduced a reverse-engineered clone of the Intel 8080 microprocessor. During this
period, AMD also designed and produced a series of bit-slice processor elements (Am2900, Am29116,
Am293xx) which were used in various minicomputer designs.
AMD announced the acquisition of ATI Technologies on July 24, 2006. AMD paid US$4.3 billion in cash
and 58 million shares of its stock, for a total of US$5.4 billion. The transaction completed on October 25,
2006.
[9]
Since 2010, all of the company's graphics processing products have been marketed under the
AMD brand name
In October 2008, AMD announced plans to spin off manufacturing operations in the form of a
multibillion-dollar joint venture with Advanced Technology Investment Co., an investment company
formed by the government of Abu Dhabi. The new venture is called GlobalFoundries Inc. This
partnership will allow AMD to focus solely on chip design.
[12]
The spin off was accompanied by the loss of
approximately 1000 jobs, or about 10% of AMD's global workforce.
[13]
In August 2011, AMD announced that former Lenovo executive Rory Read would be joining the company
as CEO, following Dirk Meyer.[14]

AMD announced in November 2011 plans to lay off more than 10% (1400) of its employees from across
all divisions worldwide.[13] This action was to have completed by Q1 2012 with most exits before
Christmas 2011.[13] AMD announced in October 2012 plans to release an additional 15% of its
workforce with an unspecified effective date to reduce costs in the face of declining sales revenue.[15]

AMD acquired the low-power server manufacturer SeaMicro in early 2012 as part of a strategy to regain
lost market share in the server chip marke