American Megatrends Inc.,

doing business as A trade name, trading name, or business name is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is fictitious business name. Registering the fictitious name with ...

AMI, is an international hardware and

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

company A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of legal people, whether Natural person, natural, Juridical person, juridical or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members ...

, specializing in PC hardware and

firmware In computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, h ...

. The company was founded in 1985 by Pat Sarma and Subramonian Shankar. It is headquartered in Building 800 at 3095 Satellite Boulevard in unincorporated Gwinnett County,

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, near the city of

Duluth Duluth ( ) is a Port, port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of St. Louis County, Minnesota, St. Louis County. Located on Lake Superior in Minnesota's Arrowhead Region, the city is a hub for cargo shipping. The population ...

, and in the

Atlanta metropolitan area Metro Atlanta, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell metropolitan statistical area, is the most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Georgia and the sixt ...

. The company started as a

manufacturer Manufacturing is the creation or Production (economics), production of goods with the help of equipment, Work (human activity), labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary se ...

of complete

motherboard A motherboard, also called a mainboard, a system board, a logic board, and informally a mobo (see #Nomenclature, "Nomenclature" section), is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It ho ...

s, positioning itself in the high-end segment. Its first customer was PC's, later known as

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

.Jacobs, Daniel G.
Business revolutionary
. ''Smart Business''. July 2004. Retrieved on May 6, 2009. As hardware activity moved progressively to

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

-based ODMs,Morris, Ricky.
Motherboard Industry Overview
. ''Digitimes''. Monday June 9, 2008 (last update Wednesday July 9, 2008). Retrieved on May 6, 2009. AMI continued to develop

BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is a type of firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization d ...

firmware for major motherboard manufacturers. The company produced BIOS software for motherboards (1986),

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

motherboards (1992), storage controllers (1995) and remote management cards (1998). In 1993, AMI produced MegaRAID, a storage controller card. AMI sold its

RAID RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...

assets to LSI in 2001,Compare
American Megatrends Inc. to Sell Industry-Leading RAID Business to LSI Logic
. ''Business Wire''. May 29, 2001. Retrieved on May 5, 2009. 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. Its product line includes or has previously included AMIBIOS (a

), Aptio (a successor to AMIBIOS8 based on the

UEFI Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI, as an acronym) is a Specification (technical standard), specification for the firmware Software architecture, architecture of a computing platform. When a computer booting, is powered on, the UEFI ...

standard), diagnostic software, AMI EC ( embedded controller firmware), MG-Series SGPIO backplane controllers (for

SATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard ...

, SAS and

NVMe NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCIS) is an open, logical-device interface specification for accessing a computer's non-volatile storage media usually attached via the PCI Express bus. The in ...

storage devices), driver/firmware development, and MegaRAC ( BMC firmware).

Founding

American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) was founded in 1985 by Subramonian Shankar and Pat Sarma with funds from a previous consulting venture, Access Methods Inc. (AMI). 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. 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, with the same initials as Access Methods; the renamed company then purchased AMIBIOS from Access Methods. Shankar became the president and Sarma the executive vice-president of this company. This partnership continued until 2001, when

LSI Logic LSI Logic Corporation was an American company founded in Santa Clara, California, was a pioneer in the ASIC and EDA industries. It evolved over time to design and sell semiconductors and software that accelerated storage and networking in data ...

purchased the RAID Division of American Megatrends; American Megatrends then purchased all shares of the company owned by Sarma, making Shankar the majority owner.

Products

AMIDiag

AMIDiag is a family of PC diagnostic utilities sold to OEMs only. The AMIDiag suite was introduced in 1991 and made available for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

platforms. 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 An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

drivers or facilities.

Aptio

AMI's

solutions. Aptio V is AMI's current main UEFI

product. Aptio Community Edition is an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

UEFI firmware product. Aptio 4 is a now-discontinued previous version that has been succeeded by Aptio V.

MegaRAC

MegaRAC is a

product line In marketing jargon, product lining refers to the offering of several related product (business), products for individual sale. Unlike product bundling, where several products are combined into one group, which is then offered for sale as a uni ...

of BMC firmware packages and formerly service processors providing

out-of-band In telecommunications, out-of-band activity is activity outside a defined frequency band, or, metaphorically, outside of any primary communication channel. Protection from falsing is among its purposes. Examples General usage * Out-of-band agr ...

, or lights-out remote management of

computer systems A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

. These BMCs running MegaRAC

packages or service processors operate independently of the

status or location, to manage and

troubleshoot Troubleshooting is a form of problem solving, often applied to repair failed products or processes on a machine or a system. It is a logical, systematic search for the source of a problem in order to solve it, and make the product or process ope ...

computers.

Former products

AMIBIOS

AMIBIOS is the

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...

-compatible

that was formerly developed and sold by American Megatrends since 1986. In 1994, the company claimed that 75% of PC clones used AMIBIOS. It is used on

s made by AMI and by other companies. AMIBIOS in PCChips M925LR Pentium 4

American Megatrends had a strict OEM business model for AMIBIOS: it sold source code to motherboard manufacturers or customized AMIBIOS for each OEM individually, whichever business model they require. 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. However, the company published two books on its BIOS in 1993 and 1994, written by its engineers. During powerup, the BIOS

displays an ID string in the lower-left-hand corner of the screen. 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. 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. These latter are displayed when the Insert key is pressed during power-on self-test. The original AMI BIOS did not encrypt the machine startup password, which it stored in non-volatile

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

. Therefore, any utility capable of reading a PC's

NVRAM Non-volatile random-access memory (NVRAM) is random-access memory that retains data without applied power. This is in contrast to dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and static random-access memory (SRAM), which both maintain data only for as l ...

was able to read and to alter the password. The AMI WinBIOS encrypts the stored password, using a simple

substitution cipher In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encrypting in which units of plaintext are replaced with the ciphertext, in a defined manner, with the help of a key; the "units" may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, t ...

. By pressing the

Delete key The delete key (often abbreviated del) is a button on most computer keyboards which is typically used to delete either (in text mode) the character ahead of or beneath the cursor, or (in GUI mode) the currently-selected object. The key is somet ...

during power-on self-test when a prompt is displayed, the BIOS setup utility program is invoked. 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. AMIBIOS was formerly sold through distributors, not directly available from the manufacturer or from eSupport. AMI supplies both

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

and

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

firmware upgrade utilities for its own motherboards. eSupport only supplies a Windows upgrade utility.

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. AMI couples off-the-shelf hardware with the StorTrends iTX storage management firmware platform. StorTrends offers synchronous, asynchronous and snap-assisted replication, thin provisioning, high-availability grouping and advanced caching. 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 Failover is switching to a redundant or standby computer server, system, hardware component or network upon the failure or abnormal termination of the previously active application, server, system, hardware component, or network in a computer ...

capability to ensure that any interruption is handled without affecting data. It supports

High-availability cluster In computing, high-availability clusters (HA clusters) or fail-over clusters are groups of computers that support server applications that can be reliably utilized with a minimum amount of down-time. They operate by using high availability sof ...

, redundancy, scalability, replication, disaster recovery and multiple site backups.

DuOS-M

''DuOS-M'' was commercial software developed by American Megatrends for

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

-based computers using the

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

to provide a "dual operating system" environment in which the user can simultaneously deploy the Android operating system in tandem with Microsoft Windows. Because DuOS-M has the capability to run both Windows and Android simultaneously, the user can switch between the two operating systems without having to dual boot or suspend operation of one operating system in order to utilize the other. DuOS-M supports key hardware

peripherals A peripheral device, or simply peripheral, is an auxiliary hardware device that a computer uses to transfer information externally. A peripheral is a hardware component that is accessible to and controlled by a computer but is not a core compo ...

in Windows including cameras, audio, microphone and sensors such as ambient light sensor,

accelerometer An accelerometer is a device that measures the proper acceleration of an object. Proper acceleration is the acceleration (the rate of change (mathematics), rate of change of velocity) of the object relative to an observer who is in free fall (tha ...

, gyrometer,

compass A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with No ...

and orientation sensors. It also supports various screen sizes, resolutions, and screen orientation (portrait and landscape) along with 3D acceleration and HD video playback. The first version of DuOS-M was released in June 2014. The software is available for download for a free 30-day trial, and is available for purchase for a complete license. On March 7, 2018, American Megatrends officially announced that it ceased development of DuOS-M. No further updates were being released at this time, including bug fixes and security patches.

Technical problems

On November 13, 1993, some PCs with AMIBIOS firmware began bootup playing the tune to " Happy Birthday". The PC would remain halted, and the song would continue playing until a key was pressed, after which bootup would resume. The problem was caused by a

virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living Cell (biology), cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Viruses are ...

-free

Trojan Trojan or Trojans may refer to: * Of or from the ancient city of Troy * Trojan language, the language of the historical Trojans Arts and entertainment Music * '' Les Troyens'' ('The Trojans'), an opera by Berlioz, premiered part 1863, part 18 ...

, which was later resolved with firmware updates. The AMI WinBIOS was a 1994 update to AMIBIOS, with a GUI setup screen that mimicked the appearance of

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series run as a shell on top of MS-DOS; it was the last Windows 1 ...

and supported

mouse A mouse (: mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus'' ...

navigation, unusual at the time. WinBIOS was viewed favorably by Anand Lal Shimpi at

AnandTech ''AnandTech'' was an online computer hardware magazine owned by Future plc. It was founded in April 1997 by then-14-year-old Anand Lal Shimpi, who was CEO and editor-in-chief until August 2014, with Ryan Smith replacing him as editor-in-chief. ...

, but described by Thomas Pabst at

Tom's Hardware ''Tom's Hardware'' is an online publication owned by Future plc and focused on technology. It was founded in 1996 by Thomas Pabst. It provides articles, news, price comparisons, videos and reviews on computer hardware and high technology. The s ...

as a "big disappointment", in part because of problems with distributing IRQ signals to every PCI and ISA expansion slot. In July 2008 Linux developers discovered issues with ACPI tables on certain AMIBIOS BIOSes supplied by

Foxconn Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. (), Trade name, doing business as Hon Hai Technology Group () in Taiwan, Foxconn Technology Group () in China, and Foxconn () internationally, is a Taiwanese multinational corporation, multinational electron ...

ASUS ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (, , , ; stylized as ASUSTeK or ASUS) is a Taiwanese Multinational corporation, multinational computer, phone hardware and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan. Its products include deskto ...

, and MSI. The problem was 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. The issue affected motherboards with Intel Socket 775. Actual system behavior differed based on BIOS version, system hardware and

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

. In October 2021 an issue was discovered where some Baseboard Management Controllers were shipped with a license/royalty sticker that had the company name misspelled as "American Megatrands".

Worldwide offices

** Headquarters:

Duluth, Georgia Duluth ( ) is a city in Gwinnett County, Georgia, United States. Located north of Interstate 85, it is approximately northeast of Atlanta. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, Duluth had a population of 31,873, and the United Stat ...

** Field offices:

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

;

Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Kunshan Kunshan is a county-level city in southeastern Jiangsu Province, Jiangsu province with Shanghai bordering its eastern border and Suzhou on its western boundary. It is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Suzhou. Name Th ...

Jiangsu Jiangsu is a coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the List of Chinese administra ...

Shenzhen Shenzhen is a prefecture-level city in the province of Guangdong, China. A Special economic zones of China, special economic zone, it is located on the east bank of the Pearl River (China), Pearl River estuary on the central coast of Guangdong ...

Guangdong ) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...

Taipei , nickname = The City of Azaleas , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Taiwan#Asia#Pacific Ocean#Earth , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country ...

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

Chennai Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

Chiyoda, Tokyo , known as Chiyoda City in English,
." ''City of Chiyoda''. Retrieved on December 28, 2008. is a S ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

* Formerly had an office in

DuPont Dupont, DuPont, Du Pont, duPont, or du Pont may refer to: People * Dupont (surname) Dupont, also spelled as DuPont, duPont, Du Pont, or du Pont is a French surname meaning "of the bridge", historically indicating that the holder of the surname re ...

, Washington,

International Offices
." ''American Megatrends''. Retrieved on May 6, 2009.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Companies based in Gwinnett County, Georgia Software companies based in Georgia (U.S. state) BIOS Software companies established in 1985 Software companies of the United States 1985 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state) Computer hardware companies Computer companies of the United States