Advanced Micro Devices was formally incorporated on May 1, 1969, by
Jerry Sanders, along with seven of his colleagues from
Fairchild Semiconductor.
[5][6] Sanders, an
electrical engineer who was the director of marketing at Fairchild, had, like many Fairchild executives, grown frustrated with the increasing lack of support, opportunity, and flexibility within the company, and decided to leave to start his own
semiconductor company.
[7] The previous year
Robert Noyce, who had developed the first silicon
integrated circuit in 1959 at Fairchild,
[8] had left Fairchild together with
Gordon Moore and founded the semiconductor company
Intel in July 1968.
[9]
In September 1969, AMD moved from its temporary location in
Santa Clara to
Sunnyvale, California.
[10] To immediately secure a customer base, AMD initially became a
second source supplier of microchips designed by Fairchild and
National Semiconductor.
[11][12] AMD first focused on producing logic chips.
[13] The company guaranteed quality control to
United States Military Standard, an advantage in the early computer industry since unreliability in microchips was a distinct problem that customers – including
computer manufacturers, the
telecommunications industry, and instrument manufacturers – wanted to avoid.
[11][14][15][16]
In November 1969, the company manufactured its first product, the Am9300, a
4-bit MSI shift register, which began selling in 1970.
[16][17] Also in 1970, AMD produced its first proprietary product, the Am2501 logic counter, which was highly successful.
[18][19] Its best-selling product in 1971 was the Am2505, the fastest
multiplier available.
[18][20]
In 1971, AMD entered the
RAM chip market, beginning with the Am3101, a
64-bit bipolar RAM.
[20][21] That year AMD also greatly increased the sales volume of its linear integrated circuits, and by year end the company's total annual sales reached
US$4.6 million.
[18][22]
AMD went public in September 1972.
[11][23][24] The company was a second source for Intel
MOS/
LSI circuits by 1973, with products such as Am14/1506 and Am14/1507, dual 100-bit dynamic shift registers.
[25][26] By 1975, AMD was producing 212 products – of which 49 were proprietary, including the Am9102 (a
static N-channel 1024-bit RAM)
[27] and three low-power
Schottky MSI circuits: Am25LS07, Am25LS08, and Am25LS09.
[28]
Intel had created the first
microprocessor, its 4-bit
4004, in 1971.
[29][30] By 1975, AMD entered the microprocessor market with the
Am9080, a
reverse-engineered clone of the
Intel 8080,
[31][32][33] and the
Am2900 bit-slicemicroprocessor family.
[32] When Intel began installing
microcode in its microprocessors in 1976, it entered into a
cross-licensing agreement with AMD, granting AMD a copyright license to the microcode in its microprocessors and peripherals, effective October 1976.
[28][34][35][36][37]
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