American Megatrends, Inc., doing business as AMI, is an international hardware and software company, specializing in PC hardware and firmware. 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, United States, near the city of Duluth, and in the Atlanta metropolitan area.
The company started as a manufacturer of complete motherboards, positioning itself in the high-end segment. Its first customer was PC's Limited,
As hardware activity moved progressively to Taiwan-based ODMs, AMI continued to develop BIOS firmware for major motherboard manufacturers. The company produced BIOS software for motherboards (1986), server motherboards (1992), storage controllers (1995) and remote management cards (1998). 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. (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 (BMC firmware).. They announced their intent to sell in 2024
Founding
thumb|Old American Megatrends logo (1985–2020)
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).
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. The AMIDiag suite was introduced in 1991 and made available for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows and UEFI platforms.
! Number of beeps !! Meaning
|-
| 1 || Power-on self test successful
|-
| 2 || Parity error in the first 64 KB of RAM
|-
| 3 || Memory failure in the first 64 KB of RAM
|-
| 4 || Same as 3, but also including a non-functional timer 1
|-
| 5 || CPU error
|-
| 6 || Error in the A20 line on the 8042 keyboard controller chip
|-
| 7 || Generation of a CPU virtual mode exception signifying an error
|-
| 8 || Read/write error when accessing system video RAM
|-
| 9 || Mismatch between the calculated checksum of the ROM firmware and the expected value hardcoded into the firmware.
|-
| 10 || Read/write error for the CMOS NVRAM shutdown register
|-
| 11 || A fault in the L2 cache
|}
AMIBIOS is the IBM PC-compatible BIOS that was formerly developed and sold by American Megatrends since 1986. It is used on motherboards made by AMI and by other companies.
During powerup, the BIOS firmware 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.
By pressing the Delete key during power-on self-test when a prompt is displayed, the BIOS setup utility program is invoked.
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.
DuOS-M
DuOS-M was commercial software developed by American Megatrends for Intel x86-based computers 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.
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. in Windows including cameras, audio, microphone and sensors such as ambient light sensor, accelerometer, gyrometer, compass and orientation sensors. 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-free Trojan, which was later resolved with firmware updates. 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.
In July 2008 Linux developers discovered issues with ACPI tables on certain AMIBIOS BIOSes supplied by Foxconn, ASUS, and MSI.
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
- United States
- Headquarters: Duluth, Georgia
- Field offices: San Jose, California; Austin, Texas
- Beijing, People's Republic of China
- Kunshan, Jiangsu, People's Republic of China
- Shenzhen, Guangdong, People's Republic of China
- Taipei, Taiwan
- Munich, Germany
- Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
- Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan
- Seoul, South Korea
- Formerly had an office in DuPont, Washington, United States
See also
- BIOS features comparison
- Insyde Software
- Phoenix Technologies
- Award Software, which was bought by Phoenix Technologies
- List of companies of Taiwan