← All stories

The Tech Archived · VIDEO ESSAY

What Happened to ATI? The Radeon Maker That Survived 3dfx, Then Disappeared Into AMD

What happened to ATI, the Canadian company behind Radeon that outlasted 3dfx, S3 and Matrox and then vanished inside AMD within four years? Founded in Markham, Ontario in 1985, ATI survived the 1990s graphics wars by selling chips to PC makers. It took the performance crown from Nvidia with the Radeon 9700 Pro in 2002 and designed the graphics for the Nintendo GameCube, the Wii and the Xbox 360. In 2006 AMD bought ATI for about $5.4 billion. Within two years AMD had written down billions of dollars of that purchase and sold ATI’s mobile graphics team to Qualcomm for $65 million, where it became Adreno, the graphics inside Snapdragon phones. In 2010 AMD retired the ATI name altogether. This documentary uses SEC filings, regulatory records and contemporary trade press to trace how the last survivor of the graphics wars was taken apart by the company that bought it. It also covers the Ontario Securities Commission case and why the usual explanations, that Nvidia beat ATI or that AMD simply absorbed it, miss what really happened.

Video by The Tech Archived · Watch on YouTube ↗

About this video

What happened to ATI, the Canadian company behind Radeon that outlasted 3dfx, S3 and Matrox and then vanished inside AMD within four years? Founded in Markham, Ontario in 1985, ATI survived the 1990s graphics wars by selling chips to PC makers. It took the performance crown from Nvidia with the Radeon 9700 Pro in 2002 and designed the graphics for the Nintendo GameCube, the Wii and the Xbox 360. In 2006 AMD bought ATI for about $5.4 billion. Within two years AMD had written down billions of dollars of that purchase and sold ATI’s mobile graphics team to Qualcomm for $65 million, where it became Adreno, the graphics inside Snapdragon phones. In 2010 AMD retired the ATI name altogether. This documentary uses SEC filings, regulatory records and contemporary trade press to trace how the last survivor of the graphics wars was taken apart by the company that bought it. It also covers the Ontario Securities Commission case and why the usual explanations, that Nvidia beat ATI or that AMD simply absorbed it, miss what really happened.

Explore the companies

Sources & further reading

Source notes are being assembled. See the company index for archival leads.

VIDEO DESCRIPTION

What happened to ATI, the Canadian company behind Radeon that outlasted 3dfx, S3 and Matrox and then vanished inside AMD within four years? Founded in Markham, Ontario in 1985, ATI survived the 1990s graphics wars by selling chips to PC makers. It took the performance crown from Nvidia with the Radeon 9700 Pro in 2002 and designed the graphics for the Nintendo GameCube, the Wii and the Xbox 360. In 2006 AMD bought ATI for about $5.4 billion. Within two years AMD had written down billions of dollars of that purchase and sold ATI’s mobile graphics team to Qualcomm for $65 million, where it became Adreno, the graphics inside Snapdragon phones. In 2010 AMD retired the ATI name altogether. This documentary uses SEC filings, regulatory records and contemporary trade press to trace how the last survivor of the graphics wars was taken apart by the company that bought it. It also covers the Ontario Securities Commission case and why the usual explanations, that Nvidia beat ATI or that AMD simply absorbed it, miss what really happened.

Visit the channel ↗