ATI Technologies

ATI Technologies Inc. (ATI) was a Canadian semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, that specialized in the development of GPUs and chipsets. Founded in 1985, the company listed publicly in 1993 and was acquired by AMD in 2006. As a major fabless semiconductor company, ATI conducted research and development in-house and outsourced the manufacturing and assembly of its products. With the decline and eventual bankruptcy of 3dfx in 2000, ATI and its chief rival Nvidia emerged as the two dominant players in the graphics processors industry, eventually forcing other manufacturers into niche roles. The acquisition of ATI in 2006 was important to AMD's strategic development of its Fusion series of computer processors, which integrated general processing abilities with graphics processing functions within a single chip, which would become a popular option on computers in the following years, especially lower cost models. After acquiring ATI, AMD retained ATI Technologies as a subsidiary, but in 2010 AMD ceased using the ATI brand name, renaming its flagship Radeon graphics processor products with its branding instead.