The beginning of May 1969, exactly 55 years ago, is a historic date for AMD: precisely in those days Jerry Sandersnow 87 years old, and seven other co-founders started ad Advanced Micro Devices, one of the most influential companies in the history of information technology. To celebrate AMD’s birthday and, at the same time, show the potential of the new ones Ryzen processors based on NPU (Neural Processing Unit), the company shared a series of “vintage” photos, restored for the occasion using artificial intelligence.
AMD: crucial stages in the history of a semiconductor giant
For five and a half decades, AMD has helped lead the industry to new horizons. From a small startup, AMD has become one of Intel’s main competitors in the computer industry PC and server processors.
Among the most important milestones set in the most recent past we cannot fail to mention the introduction of version a 64 bit of the x86 architecture, with the launch of the first AMD Opteron and Athlon 64 processors in 2003. Those chips, bringing the x64 specifications o x86-64 (otherwise known as 64-bit extensions of the x86 platform), have made it possible to create systems capable of managing a greater amount of RAM memory and carrying out tasks in a more efficient way.
Differently from what happened previously with the multi-year legal dispute between Intel and AMD over the use ofISA (Instruction Set Architecture) x86, the company now headed by Lisa Su did not object to licensing the extension to Intel, which began implementing it in its Core 2 processors.
The x86-64 innovation opened up a significant one performance growth and of theefficiency of information systems, effectively marking a new era in the information technology field. In another article we saw why we stopped at 64 bit and it is useless to evaluate a migration to 128 bit.
The acquisition of ATI and the launch of the Ryzen series
In one of its most important strategic moves, AMD acquired in 2006 ATI Technologies, a well-known graphics chip maker, for approximately $5.4 billion. The operation allowed AMD to expand into the computer market graphics cards and has consolidated its presence in the PC, laptop and gaming console sectors.
After a darker period, 2017 represented AMD’s return in style with the launch of the Ryzen series processors. Thanks to the “vision” of the legendary chip designer Jim Keller, AMD roared back, taking away important market shares from its rival Intel.
The architectures Zen e Zen 2 have literally revolutionized the design of AMD processors, bringing significant improvements in performance andenergy efficiency.
From video game consoles to the most powerful servers
In 2020 we remember the partnerships with Sony e Microsoft in order to provide custom processors for their respective next-generation gaming consoles, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series The same year AMD completed the important acquisition of Xilinx, a maker of programmable devices, for about $35 billion. This move further expanded AMD’s product lineup and design capabilities, allowing it to compete more aggressively in areas such as signal processing, artificial intelligence, and edge computing.
AMD has seen significant growth in the computer industry server with his line of EPYC processors based on Zen architecture. The lower energy appetite of these chips has also led to their immediate success in the corporate, data center and enterprise sectors.
The recent commitment to artificial intelligence “in hardware”
The trend is to bring sufficient power locally to the individual chips of end users (professionals and private individuals) to manage workloads related toartificial intelligence.
Thus, AMD was the first company to introduce the first x86 processor to the world endowed with Integrated NPU. The new platform is called AMD Ryzen AI and, as mentioned in the introduction, the technicians of the Sunnyvale company wanted to exploit its advantages to bring old photographs and memories back to life.
Describing the NPU of processors AMD Ryzen 7040 e 8040 as an essential tool for supervising the workload in the field of AI, thanks to a power of up to 16 TeraOPS and unparalleled energy efficiency, the company has used these processors to restore and “colour” some historical photos preserved in its archives.
AMD spokespeople strongly point out that the entire restoration work was performed on a single AMD Ryzen AI-based laptop, using software such as Adobe Photoshop Neural Filters e Topaz Photo AI.
Photos restored with AMD Ryzen AI technology
One of the first historical shots restored by AMD, portrays Rich Previtethe twelfth employee hired by the company, who has held important roles within the company for over 30 years, including that of CFO and president.
Another telling image captures the moment AMD founders and employees laid the cornerstone of 915 DeGuigne building in Sunnyvale, in 1969. The building was the AMD headquarters for more than 47 years, serving as the stage for a series of technological innovations that have defined the future of computing.
Through the use of AMD Ryzen AI technology, the company has also brought to light historical moments such as the merger between Monolithic Memories e Advanced Micro Devices. This agreement, symbolized by the signing of CEOs Jerry Sanders and Irwin Federman, had a significant impact on AMD’s evolutionary path.
Finally, AMD wanted to pay homage to one of the most significant events of 1969: the launch of the mission Apollo 11 of NASA, which brought humanity to the Moon for the first time. Using the techniques of colorization based on artificial intelligence, AMD can today show some crucial moments of the historic space enterprise.
In a final note, despite the impeccable results, AMD specifies that the recovery techniques, colorization and AI-based upscaling are no substitute for professional restoration and may still produce inaccurate results. In short, they are shown for entertainment purposes only.
The images published in the article are from AMD and are shared by the company on this page.