American Megatrends: Difference between revisions
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The server industry is lately migrating on solutions based on IPMI technology. AMI launched the MegaRAC PM Firmware Solution in 2002. The code is completely AMIBIOS independent. |
The server industry is lately migrating on solutions based on IPMI technology. AMI launched the MegaRAC PM Firmware Solution in 2002. The code is completely AMIBIOS independent. |
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With the development of powerful chip-based integrated Baseboard Management Controllers, AMI |
With the development of powerful chip-based integrated Baseboard Management Controllers, AMI focus shifted to providing firmware-based Service Processor solutions. Called MegaRAC SP, the firmware implements complete KVM redirection, console redirection and remote media for System-on-Chip. An SoC subsystem complete with MegaRAC SP has a definite cost advantage over bulky card-based alternatives. |
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===StorTrends/ManageTrends=== |
===StorTrends/ManageTrends=== |
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Revision as of 17:15, 20 January 2009
 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer hardware Diagnostic software Remote access Motherboards Firmware Storage systems |
| Founded | S. Shankar, (1985)[1] [2] |
| Headquarters | Norcross, Georgia, United States |
| Products | AMIBIOS Aptio AMIDIAG StorTrends MegaRAC ManageTrends |
Number of employees | 500+ worldwide |
| Website | www.ami.com |
American Megatrends Incorporated (AMI) is a hardware and software company headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, United States that specializes in PC hardware and firmware. It was founded in 1985 by the current chairman and president, S. Shankar.
The company started as a manufacturer of complete motherboards, positioning itself in the high-end segment. Its first customer happened to be PCs Ltd, later known as Dell Computers. [3]
As hardware business moved progressively to Taiwan-based ODMs [4], AMI retained a strong customer base as a BIOS firmware developer for major motherboard manufacturers. The company focused on the BIOS software portion of the motherboard business, at the same time diversifying towards technologically richer products such as server motherboards (1992), storage controllers (1995) and remote management cards (1998).
AMI’s greatest success story came in 1996 with MegaRAID, a storage controller card. Thanks to its unique online expansion capability, the MegaRAID became an immediate success and was adopted by major OEMs like HP and Dell. The RAID division assets were sold to LSI Logic in 2001. [5]
Today AMI still has a strong OEM and technology focus. Its product line includes AMIBIOS (a BIOS), Aptio (a successor to AMIBIOS8 based on the UEFI standard), diagnostic software, remote access firmware, motherboards, SGPIO backplane controllers, driver/firmware development, service processors, and NAS and IP-SAN storage systems for SMBs.
As an early PC motherboard manufacturer developing in-house both hardware and firmware, AMI claims a number of design innovations:
- First to build motherboards based on Intel's 386 and 486 processor platforms;
- First to use onboard external cache designs for these boards;
- First to build and ship a quad-Xeon processor system;
- First to support USB in BIOS;
- First to create a GUI BIOS interface with mouse support;
- First to integrate BIOS diagnostics and first to support ACPI;
- First to support SATA in BIOS diagnostics;
- First to develop RAID controllers with online expansion capability.
Worldwide offices:[6]
- United States
- Headquarters: Norcross, Georgia
- Field office: Fremont, California
- Kunshan, Jiangsu, People's Republic of China
- Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China
- Munich, Germany
- Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
- Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan
- Seoul, South Korea
- Dupont, Washington, United States[7]
Products
AMIBIOS
| Number of beeps | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 1 | power-on self test successful |
| 2 | Parity error in the first 64KiB of RAM |
| 3 | Memory failure in the first 64KiB 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 (also AMI BIOS) is the BIOS developed and sold by American Megatrends. It is used both on the company's own motherboards and on motherbords sold by other companies. American Megatrends is the only third-party BIOS manufacturer to also produce its own motherboards, though in relatively small volumes. As of 2002, AMI BIOS was the most popular BIOS firmware for PCs.[10][11]
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. AMI does not sell BIOS or BIOS chips to end-users. As a consequence, AMI produces no end-user documentation for its BIOS firmware or provide direct technical support, leaving that up to licensees. However, the company published two books on its BIOS (listed in further reading), written by its engineers.[11].
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. 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 one presses the Insert key during power-on self-test. [11]
The original AMI BIOS did not encrypt the machine startup password, which it stored in non-volatile RAM. Therefore, any utility capable of reading a PC's NVRAM was able to read and to alter the password. The AMI WinBIOS encrypts the stored password, using a simple substitution cipher.[12]
By pressing the Delete key during power-on self-test, during the period when one is prompted to do so, one can invoke the built-in setup utility program. In the past, some AMIBIOS versions also included a cut-down version of the AMIDIAG utility that AMI also sold separately. Most recent AMI BIOSes do not include this program as the BIOS DMI already incorporates detailed diagnostics.[11]
AMIBIOS is only sold through distributors, not directly to end users. Firmware upgrades and replacements are not available from AMI, except for its own motherboards. Upgrades and replacements for AMIBIOS customized for a motherboard are only available from the manufacturer of that motherboard, or from eSupport.
AMI supplies both DOS and Win32 firmware upgrade utilities for its own motherboards. eSupport only supplies a Win32 upgrade utility.[11][13][14]
AMIDIAG
It is a family of PC diagnostic utilities introduced in 1988. It is available in DOS, Windows and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) platforms. AMIDiag Suite includes both the Windows and DOS PC diagnostics programs.
The latest AMIDiag version leverages the advantages of UEFI, which allows diagnostics to be performed directly on the hardware components, without having to interface the Windows drivers. The product is sold to OEMs only.
Service Processor and IPMI
The MegaRAC remote management controller was introduced in 1998 for Dell Computers, that later developed the DRAC. The second generation card, MegaRACG2, provided efficient console and KVM redirection, firewall and battery backup, but was rather expensive. Successive MegaRAC generations, the G3 and G4, provide incremental performance at a better price point.
The server industry is lately migrating on solutions based on IPMI technology. AMI launched the MegaRAC PM Firmware Solution in 2002. The code is completely AMIBIOS independent.
With the development of powerful chip-based integrated Baseboard Management Controllers, AMI focus shifted to providing firmware-based Service Processor solutions. Called MegaRAC SP, the firmware implements complete KVM redirection, console redirection and remote media for System-on-Chip. An SoC subsystem complete with MegaRAC SP has a definite cost advantage over bulky card-based alternatives.
StorTrends/ManageTrends
The StorTrends family of network-based backup and storage management software and hardware includes several NAS and iSCSI-based SAN solutions with 4 or 15 drive bays.
AMI approach couples off-the-shelf hardware solutions with an advanced, proprietary storage management firmware platform, StorTrends iTX, which now reached version 2.7. StorTrends is designed to offer corporate-level features to small & medium businesses (SMBs), including synchronous, asynchronous and snap-assisted replication, thin-provisioning, high-availability grouping and advanced caching.
Controversies
The AMI WinBIOS was a 1998 update to AMIBIOS, with a graphical user interface setup screen that mimicked the appearance of Windows 3.1. Anand Lal Shimpi at AnandTech commented: “The AMI WinBIOS mimics the old Windows 3.11 interface and even allows you to navigate through the setup with your mouse provided it is plugged in at the time of startup. While this is a "cute" feature, the WinBIOS does not lack in power when compared to the more conventional Award BIOS.” [15] On the other hand, WinBIOS was presented 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. [16]
In July 2008, Linux developers discovered issues with ACPI tables on certain AMIBIOS products (shipped by Foxconn, ASUS, and MSI). 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 is now included in later revisions of AMIBIOS. The issue affects models of Intel-based motherboards using Socket 775. Actual system behavior differs based on BIOS version, system hardware and Linux distribution. [17]
See also
References
- ^ "Corporate Information." American Megatrends.
- ^ "S.Shankar's Biography." iiT.Madras.org. (scroll down)
- ^ "S.Shankar's Interview." SBN Online
- ^ "Motherboard Industry Overview." Digitimes
- ^ "LSI transaction." Company Press Release transcript
- ^ "International Offices." American Megatrends.
- ^ "American Megatrends Announces the Opening of a New Branch Office in DuPont, Washington." American Megatrends.
- ^ K. F. Ibrahim (2002). PC Operation and Repair. Pearson Education. p. 223. ISBN 0582452708.
- ^ Jennifer Fulton (2002). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Upgrading and Repairing PCs. Alpha Books. pp. 214–215. ISBN 0028642392.
- ^ Roderick W. Smith (2000). "BIOS History and Design Theory". The Multi-Boot Configuration Handbook. Que Publishing. p. 71. ISBN 0789722836.
- ^ a b c d e Scott Mueller (2002). Upgrading and Repairing PCs. Que Publishing. pp. 368–372. ISBN 0789727455.
- ^ Phil Croucher (2001). "Advanced CMOS setup". The Bios Companion: The Book That Doesn't Come with Your Motherhood!. Lulu.com. p. 128. ISBN 0968192807.
- ^ American Megatrends. "AMIBIOS Support".
- ^ "Unsupported operating system". eSupport.com. TouchStone Software. 2007.
- ^ Anand Lal Shimpi (1998-04-20). "Supermicro P6DBS/DBE BX Pentium II Board". AnandTech.
- ^ Thomas Pabst (1998-05-26). "Review of Slot 1 Motherboards with Intel 440BX Chipset — Spring 1998". Tom's Hardware.
- ^ "Defective AMI BIOS on multiple Foxconn, MSI, and ASUS Intel LGA 775 motherboards breaks ACPI support". Ubuntu Launchpad bug tracking system. 2008.
Further reading
- American Megatrends, Inc. (1993). Programmer's Guide to the AMIBIOS. Windcrest/McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070015627.
- American Megatrends Inc. (1994). Programming Amibios. McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Limited. ISBN 0070015619.