Advanced Micro-Electronics Inc. history

In 1968 Jerry Sanders (who had previously worked for Intel founder Robert Noyce) left his position as director of worldwide marketing at Fairchild Semiconductor.

Advanced Micro Devices was founded on May 1, 1969,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.

In May 1970, AMD ended its first year with 53 employees and 18 products, but no sales.

In September 1972 the company went public, selling 525,000 shares at $15 a share, bringing in $7.87 million.

To commemorate its five-year anniversary in May 1974, AMD began what was to become a renowned tradition, holding a gala party, this one a street fair attended by employees and their families, in which televisions, ten-speed bicycles, and barbecue grills were given away.

In 1975 the company received an infusion of cash ($30 million for 20 percent of its stock) from Siemens AG, a huge West German firm who wanted a foothold in the United States semiconductor market.

In 1976 the company signed a cross-license agreement with Intel.

The firm’s debt expanded to $29 million, despite sales growth to $225.6 million by 1980.

As the telecommunications and computer industries expanded, the semiconductor industry grew rapidly, reaching $7.8 billion in 1981, of which AMD’s share was about $400 million.

AMD had become the seventh-largest United States chip manufacturer, and was growing faster than Intel, expanding by 17 percent in 1982, as opposed to Intel’s 14 percent.

In 1983, the company introduced INT.STD.1000, the highest quality standard in the industry, and incorporated AMD Singapore.

In 1984 the Austin facility added Building 2, and the company was listed in a new book entitled The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America.

The AME Group began operations in July of 1985 at 914 Main Street in Vincennes, IN. Then known as Advanced Micro-Electronics, Inc., the staff consisted of one sales representative, one technician, and one office manager.

In September 1986, Tony Holbrook was named president of the company; the following month, weakened by the long-running recession, AMD announced its first workforce restructure in over a decade.

Partly to deal with these growing problems, AMD restructured its top management in May 1988, creating an office of chief executive.

In May 1989, the company established the office of the chief executive, consisting of the top three company executives.

The task took two years, but by August 1990 AMD had constructed a version of the 386 that processed signals 40 million times a second, compared with 33 million for the Intel chip, and used less power.

The AM386 was introduced in March 1991, and captured 15 percent of the 386 market within six months.

In March 1992 AMD maintained position in its intense competition with Intel by releasing new versions of the AM386 with improved speed and lower power consumption.

Early in 1993, the first members of the Am486 microprocessor family were introduced, and AMD and Fujitsu established a joint venture to produce flash memories, a new technology in which memory chips retained information even after the power was turned off.

In March 1994, a federal court jury confirmed AMD's right to use Intel microcode in 287 math coprocessors, and the company celebrated its 25th anniversary with Rod Stewart in Sunnyvale and Bruce Hornsby in Austin.

For fiscal 1998, the company posted net sales of $2.54 billion, a 7.9 percent increase, but also recorded a painful net loss on income of $104 million.

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.

Since 2010, all of the company’s graphics processing products have been marketed under the AMD brand name.

AMD announced in November 2011 plans to lay off more than 10% (1400) of its employees from across all divisions worldwide.

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 market.”