American Megatrends

American Megatrends (AMI), formerly American Megatrends, Inc., is an international hardware and software company, specializing in PC hardware and firmware.[3] The company was founded in 1985 by Pat Sarma and Subramonian Shankar.[4] It is headquartered in Building 200 at 5555 Oakbrook Parkway in unincorporated Gwinnett County, Georgia, United States, near the city of Norcross, and in the Atlanta metropolitan area.[5]

American Megatrends
Private
IndustryComputer hardware
Computer software
Diagnostic software
Remote access
Motherboards
Firmware
Storage systems
Founded1985 (1985)
FounderS. Shankar[1][2] and Pat Sarma
HeadquartersGwinnett County, Georgia, U.S.
Key people
Sanjoy Maity (CEO)
ProductsAMIBIOS
Aptio
AMIDIAG
MegaRAC
Number of employees
>1000 worldwide
Websiteami.com

The company started as a manufacturer of complete motherboards, positioning itself in the high-end segment. Its first customer was PCs Ltd,[4] later known as Dell Computers,[6] making one of the first Intel 80386 designs.

As hardware activity moved progressively to Taiwan-based original design manufacturers,[7] AMI continued to develop BIOS firmware for major motherboard manufacturers.[8] The company produced BIOS software for motherboards (1986), server motherboards (1992), storage controllers (1995) and remote-management cards (1998).[8]

In 1993 AMI produced MegaRAID, a storage controller card. AMI sold its RAID-division assets to LSI Logic[4] in 2001,[9] with only one employee from the RAID-division remaining with the AMI core team.

AMI continued to focus on OEM and ODM business and technology.[3] Its product line includes AMIBIOS[10] (a BIOS), Aptio (a successor to AMIBIOS8 based on the UEFI standard), diagnostic software, AMI EC (embedded controller firmware), MG-Series SGPIO backplane controllers (for SATA, SAS and NVMe storage devices), driver/firmware development, and MegaRAC SP-X (BMC firmware).[3][4]

Founding
American Megatrends logo

American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) was founded in 1985 by Subramonian Shankar and Pat Sarma with funds from a previous consulting venture, Access Methods Inc. (also AMI).[4] Access Methods was a company run by Pat Sarma and his partner. After Access Methods successfully launched the AMIBIOS, there were legal issues among the owners of the company, resulting in Sarma buying out his partners. Access Methods still owned the rights to the AMIBIOS. Sarma had already started a company called Quintessential Consultants Inc. (QCI), and later set up an equal partnership with Shankar.[11]

By this time the AMIBIOS had become established and there was a need to keep the initials AMI. The partners renamed QCI as American Megatrends Inc., with the same initials as Access Methods Inc.; the renamed company then purchased AMIBIOS from Access Methods. Shankar became the president and Sarma the executive vice-president of this company.[11] This partnership continued until 2001, when LSI Logic purchased the RAID Division of American Megatrends; American Megatrends then purchased all shares of the company owned by Sarma, making Shankar the majority owner.[4]

Products

AMIBIOS
Table of diagnostic beep codes compiled by AMI BIOS during power-on self test[12][13]
Number of beepsMeaning
1Power-on self test successful
2Parity error in the first 64 KiB of RAM
3Memory failure in the first 64 KiB of RAM
4Same as 3, but also including a non-functional timer 1
5CPU error
6Error in the A20 line on the 8042 keyboard controller chip
7Generation of a CPU virtual mode exception signifying an error
8Read/write error when accessing system video RAM
9Mismatch between the calculated checksum of the ROM firmware and the expected value hardcoded into the firmware.
10Read/write error for the CMOS NVRAM shutdown register
11A fault in the L2 cache

AMIBIOS (also written as AMI BIOS) is the IBM PC-compatible BIOS developed and sold by American Megatrends since 1986.[10] In 1994, the company claimed that 75% of PC clones used the AMIBIOS.[14] It is used on motherboards made by AMI and by other companies.[3]

A chip containing an old version AMIBIOS image, pulled from an ECS motherboard

American Megatrends has a strict OEM business model for AMIBIOS: it sells source code to motherboard manufacturers or customizes AMIBIOS for each OEM individually, whichever business model they require.[10] AMI does not sell to end users, and itself produces no end-user documentation or technical support for its BIOS firmware, leaving that to licensees.[10] However, the company published two books on its BIOS in 1993 and 1994, (listed in further reading), written by its engineers.[15]

During powerup, the BIOS firmware displays an ID string in the lower-left-hand corner of the screen.[16] This ID string comprises various pieces of information about the firmware, including when it was compiled, what configuration options were selected, the OEM license code, and the targeted chipset and motherboard.[16] There are 3 ID string formats, the first for older AMIBIOS, and the second and third for the newer AMI Hi-Flex ("high flexibility") BIOS.[15] These latter are displayed when the Insert key is pressed during power-on self-test.[15]

The original AMI BIOS did not encrypt the machine startup password, which it stored in non-volatile RAM.[16] Therefore, any utility capable of reading a PC's NVRAM was able to read and to alter the password.[15] The AMI WinBIOS encrypts the stored password, using a simple substitution cipher.[17]

By pressing the Delete key during power-on self-test when a prompt is displayed, the BIOS setup utility program is invoked.[15] Some earlier AMIBIOS versions also included a cut-down version of the AMIDIAG utility that AMI also sold separately, but most later AMI BIOSes do not include this program as the BIOS DMI already incorporates detailed diagnostics.[15]

AMIBIOS is only sold through distributors, not directly available from the manufacturer or from eSupport.[18]

AMI supplies both DOS and Windows firmware upgrade utilities for its own motherboards. eSupport only supplies a Windows upgrade utility.[15][18][19]

AMIDiag

AMIDiag is a family of PC diagnostic utilities sold to OEMs only.[20] The AMIDiag Suite was introduced in 1991 and made available for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) platforms.[20] It includes both the Windows and DOS PC diagnostics programs. Later versions of AMIDiag support UEFI, which allows diagnostics to be performed directly on the hardware components, without having to use operating system drivers or facilities.[20]

Aptio

AMI's UEFI firmware solutions, including older Aptio 4 and newer Aptio V.

MegaRAC BMC firmware

Former products

StorTrends/ManageTrends

The StorTrends family of network-based backup and storage management software and hardware includes several NAS and iSCSI-based SAN servers with 4, 12, or 16 drive bays.[21]

AMI couples off-the-shelf hardware with the StorTrends iTX storage management firmware platform.[22] StorTrends offers synchronous, asynchronous and snap-assisted replication, thin provisioning, high-availability grouping and advanced caching.[21]

Reliability and performance is the key for any storage server. StorTrends iTX 2.8 is designed to support Storage Bridge Bay specification that provide Auto-Failover capability to ensure that any interruption is handled without affecting data.[21] It supports High-availability cluster, redundancy, scalability, replication, disaster recovery and multiple site backups.[23][22]

DuOS-M
Dual OS Environment for Microsoft Windows
Developer(s)American Megatrends
Initial releaseJuly 2014
Stable release
1.0.4.5135
Operating systemWindows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1
LicenseTrialware
Websiteamiduos.com

DuOS-M was commercial software developed by American Megatrends for Intel x86-based computers[24] using the Microsoft Windows operating system to provide a "dual operating system" environment in which the user can simultaneously deploy the Android operating system in tandem with Microsoft Windows.[25]

Because DuOS-M has capability to run both Windows and Android operating systems at the same time, the user can switch[26] between the two operating systems without having to dual boot or suspend operation of one operating system in order to utilize the other.[25]

DuOS-M supports key hardware peripherals[27] in Windows including cameras, audio, microphone and sensors such as ambient light sensor, accelerometer, gyrometer, compass and orientation sensors.[25] It also supports various screen sizes, resolutions, and screen orientation (portrait and landscape) along with 3D acceleration and HD video playback.[25]

The first version of DuOS-M was released in June 2014.[25] The software is available for download for a free 30-day trial,[28] and is available for purchase for a complete license.

On March 7, 2018, American Megatrends officially announced that it ceased development of DuOS-M.[25][29] No further updates were being released at this time, including bug fixes and security patches.

Technical problems

On November 13, 1993, a number of PCs that used the AMIBIOS firmware started at boot-up to play the tune to Happy Birthday repeatedly while halting the computer until a key was pressed.[30] The problem was resolved with a Trojan-free firmware upgrade from most manufacturers.[30]

The AMI WinBIOS was a 1994 update to AMIBIOS, with a graphical user interface setup screen that mimicked the appearance of Windows 3.1 and supported mouse navigation, unusual at the time. WinBIOS was viewed favourably by Anand Lal Shimpi at AnandTech,[31] but described by Thomas Pabst at Tom's Hardware as a "big disappointment", in part because of problems with distributing IRQ signals to every PCI and ISA expansion slot.[32]

In July 2008 Linux developers discovered issues with ACPI tables on certain AMIBIOS BIOSes supplied by Foxconn, ASUS, and MSI.[33] The problem is related to the ACPI _OSI method, which is used by ACPI to determine the OS version (in case an ACPI patch only applies to one specific OS). In some cases, the OSI method caused problems on Linux systems, skipping code that was only executed on Windows systems. Foxconn and AMI worked together to develop a solution, which was included in later revisions of AMIBIOS.[33] The issue affected motherboards with Intel Socket 775. Actual system behavior differed based on BIOS version, system hardware and Linux distribution.[33]

Worldwide offices[34]
gollark: On my Arch install I can just select a different desktop environment from the login manager thingy.
gollark: I see.
gollark: One must also wonder what you're running this on which only has 20GB of disk space.
gollark: 3.9MB/s? What a bad USB stick.
gollark: They've gone all authoritarian ages ago.

See also

References
  1. Corporate Information Archived 2008-05-12 at the Wayback Machine. American Megatrends.
  2. "S. Shankar's Biography. Archived 2009-03-07 at the Wayback Machine. iiT.Madras.org. (scroll down).
  3. "About American Megatrends". American Megatrends Inc. 2018. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  4. S. Shankar interviewed on the TV show Triangulation on the TWiT.tv network
  5. "International Offices". American Megatrends. Retrieved on February 17, 2019. "AMI Corporate Headquarters 5555 Oakbrook Parkway Building 200 Norcross, Georgia 30093" – The street address has "Norcross, Georgia" in it but the location is outside of the city limits. Please refer to the following map: "OFFICIAL ZONING MAP OF THE CITY OF NORCROSS". City of Norcross. Adopted February 5, 2018. Retrieved on February 17, 2019.
  6. Jacobs, Daniel G. "Business revolutionary". Smart Business. July 2004. Retrieved on May 6, 2009.
  7. Morris, Ricky. "Motherboard Industry Overview". Digitimes. Monday June 9, 2008 (last update Wednesday July 9, 2008). Retrieved on May 6, 2009.
  8. "Corporate Profile: American Megatrends". American Megatrends Inc. 2018. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  9. Compare: American Megatrends Inc. to Sell Industry-Leading RAID Business to LSI Logic. Business Wire. May 29, 2001. Retrieved on May 5, 2009.
  10. "AMIBIOS". Techopedia. 2018. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  11. American Megatrends Inc India (14 August 2013). "Shankar S, Chairman -- AMI Keynote Speaker Transforming Healthcare with ICT 2012". Youtube. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  12. K. F. Ibrahim (2002). PC Operation and Repair. Pearson Education. p. 223. ISBN 0-582-45270-8.
  13. Jennifer Fulton (2002). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Upgrading and Repairing PCs. Alpha Books. pp. 214–215. ISBN 0-02-864239-2.
  14. Schmidt, Robert (July 1994). "What Is The BIOS?". Computing Basics. Archived from the original on 2012-03-10. Retrieved 2011-09-19.
  15. Scott Mueller (2002). Upgrading and Repairing PCs. Indianapolis, Indiana: Que Publishing. pp. 368–372. ISBN 0-7897-2745-5.
  16. PC911 (2018). "Using the BIOS to identify a motherboard". PC911. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  17. Phil Croucher (2001). "Advanced CMOS setup". The Bios Companion: The Book That Doesn't Come with Your Motherhood!. Lulu.com. p. 128. ISBN 0-9681928-0-7.
  18. American Megatrends. "AMIBIOS Support". Archived from the original on 2008-01-15.
  19. "Unsupported operating system". eSupport.com. TouchStone Software. 2007.
  20. American Megatrends (2018). "AMIDiag for UEFI". American Megatrends Inc. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  21. American Megatrends (2018). "StorTrends Data Storage". American Megatrends Inc. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  22. Storage Bridge Bay Working Group (2015). "Home page". Archived from the original on 25 July 2015. Retrieved 11 September 2016.
  23. Storage Newsletter (11 April 2011). "StorTrends 3400i Dual Controller SAN From American Megatrends". www.storagenewsletter.com. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 11 September 2016.
  24. "AMI DuOS. A closer look at a new DIY Dual-OS solution" Ultrabooknews.com. Retrieved July 2014.
  25. American Megatrends (2018). "AMIDuOS". American Megatrends Inc. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  26. "Bringing Android to Intel® Atom™ Embedded Systems with DuOS" Embedded.communities.intel.com/. Retrieved July 2014.
  27. "Bringing Android to Intel® Atom™ Embedded Systems with DuOS" Embedded.communities.intel.com. Retrieved July 2014.
  28. "DuOS by American Megatrends. Run Android on Windows" AMIDUOS.com. Retrieved July 2014.
  29. Bigelow, T (7 March 2018). "FAREWELL AMIDUOS". American Megatrends Inc. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  30. Mikko Hypponen. "F-Secure Computer Virus Information Pages: Happy Birthday".
  31. Anand Lal Shimpi (1998-04-20). "Supermicro P6DBS/DBE BX Pentium II Board". AnandTech.
  32. Thomas Pabst (1998-05-26). "Review of Slot 1 Motherboards with Intel 440BX Chipset — Spring 1998". Tom's Hardware.
  33. "Defective AMI BIOS on multiple Foxconn, MSI, and ASUS Intel LGA 775 motherboards breaks ACPI support". Ubuntu Launchpad bug tracking system. 2008.
  34. "International Offices Archived 2009-04-10 at the Wayback Machine." American Megatrends. Retrieved on May 6, 2009.
  35. "American Megatrends Announces the Opening of a New Branch Office in DuPont, Washington Archived 2008-03-11 at the Wayback Machine." American Megatrends. Friday April 29, 2005. Retrieved on May 6, 2009.

Further reading
  • American Megatrends, Inc. (1993). Programmer's Guide to the AMIBIOS. Windcrest/McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-001562-7.
  • American Megatrends Inc. (1994). Programming Amibios. McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Limited. ISBN 0-07-001561-9.
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