2001

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History of AMD: 2001

“We must out-innovate the competition, delivering semiconductor solutions based on better ideas that increase the performance, reduce the cost, and shorten the time to market for our customers' products.”
— AMD Founder Jerry Sanders & President and COO Hector Ruiz

May: AMD introduces first Flash memory device based on MirrorBit™ architecture
June: AMD announces the AMD Athlon™ MP processor and our first multiprocessing platform
October: AMD launches the AMD Athlon ™ XP processor, built on QuantiSpeed™ architecture
November: AMD ships first Flash memory product based on .17-micron process technology
November: AMD announces industry's first x32, high density, 128Mb NOR Flash memory device
November: AMD introduces advanced 1.8 volt, 64 Megabit Flash memory device

Industry Perspective

The downtrend that began in 2000 turned into a deluge in 2001, hitting the “dot-com” companies first, and eventually spreading to our customers in networking, computer manufacturing, telecom, and business in general. Despite the lean business climate, many companies began 2001 with higher IT budgets than the previous year and demand for Internet-ready solutions remained strong.

However, everything changed after the horrific events of September 11, as political uncertainty deepened the decline. The semiconductor industry experienced the sharpest drop in history , as our customers struggled to find new ways to remain competitive.

Despite the challenges, new opportunities were emerging, if one knew where to look.

In a year that put most of our customers to severe tests, AMD was proud to bring forth a variety of new solutions to help them remain competitive.

For customers developing wireless communications and personal connectivity devices such as PDAs, the drop in consumer spending demanded that they broaden the appeal of their devices. In May of 2000, AMD announced a breakthrough in memory-cell architecture known as MirrorBit™, which offered impressive benefits. MirrorBit is a proprietary AMD architecture that enables a Flash memory product to hold twice as much data as standard Flash memory, without compromising overall performance. With AMD's new MirrorBit technology-based solutions, companies could add features to their cellular phones, PDAs, and a host of other products, in a cost-effective manner.

Customers in the computing arena faced real challenges, as business IT budgets became increasingly tight. In June, AMD announced a compelling first-ever multiprocessing solution, designed to provide a competitive alternative for enterprise-level computing — offering higher performance and productivity, yet lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Built on the AMD Athlon™ MP processor and the AMD-760™ MP chipset, this new solution represented a more efficient, higher performance platform thanks to Double Data Rate (DDR) memory technology and AMD's Smart MP technology.

For the desktop and notebook world, AMD introduced the AMD Athlon™ XP processor in October. The AMD Athlon XP processor helped position our customers “ahead of the game” for the release of the Microsoft® Windows® XP operating system and offered outstanding price/performance. This was the first new solution built on AMD's QuantiSpeed™ architecture, a unique design created to help ensure superior application performance. The AMD Athlon XP processor also featured enhanced 3DNow!™ Professional technology to boost performance for digital-media applications.

In fact, 2001 was the year that the PC industry became aware that application performance and the overall user experience was a far more reliable processor performance metric than megahertz ever could be. With the release of our AMD Athlon XP processor, AMD also announced the formation of our “True Performance Initiative (TPI).” TPI was created to help consumers more clearly understand the benefits of PC performance, with a measurement they could believe in. The initiative would become a hallmark of AMD's customer-centric philosophy over the coming years.

Throughout the year, we continued to innovate Flash memory devices to allow our customers greater flexibility. In November, Spansion shipped our first family of products based on 0.17-micron process technology, an innovation that enabled our partners to boost performance while lowering costs and power consumption for cellular phones, pagers, PDAs, and more. That same month, the Spansion team announced the industry's first x32, high density, 128Mb NOR Flash memory device, enabling customers to take advantage of data throughput rates 2-3 times higher than those of competing products. We also launched our advanced 1.8-volt, 64 Megabit Flash memory device, specifically designed for the most demanding cellular market applications.

Despite the grim atmosphere of 2001, we believe customers responded to AMD innovations because they were designed with their needs in mind. Therefore, it was no surprise when AMD's 2001 performance substantially exceeded that of the industry.