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American Megatrends Incorporated (AMI) is an American hardware and software company that specializes in PC hardware and firmware. It was founded in 1985 by Pat Sarma and S. Shankar. S. Shankar is currently the chairman and president.^[1] It is headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, United States.^[3]

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. ^[4]

As hardware business moved progressively to Taiwan-based ODMs,^[5] 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. ^[6]

Today AMI still has an 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:^[7]

• United States
  • Headquarters: Gwinnett County, 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

Former offices:

• Dupont, Washington, United States^[8]

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.^[11][12]

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.^[12].

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. ^[12]

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.^[13]

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.^[12]

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.^[12][14][15]

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.

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.

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.

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.” ^[16] 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. ^[17]

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. ^[18]

American Megatrends Inc., (AMI) was founded in 1985 by Subramonian Shankar and Pat Sarma with funds earned from a previous consulting venture, Access Methods Inc. (also 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 Access Methods, resulting in Mr. Sarma buying out his partners. Access Methods still owned the rights to the AMIBIOS. Mr. Sarma had already started a company called Quintessential Consultants Inc. Mr. Sarma invited Mr. Shankar to become an employee of QCI, and very soon thereafter, offered Mr Shankar equal partnership in QCI.

By this time the AMIBIOS had become a well-known product and as a result there was a need to keep the acronym AMI. On Mr. Sarma's suggestion, the two partners decided to rename QCI as American Megatrends Inc., thereby preserving AMI's existing brand name. They then effected the purchase of the BIOS by American Megatrends from Access Methods, preserving the trade name of the BIOS. Mr. Shankar became the President of this company and Mr. Sarma, the Executive Vice-President. This partnership survived until 2001, when LSI Logic purchased the RAID Division of American Megatrends. This purchase was followed by American Megatrends purchasing all shares of the company owned by Mr. Sarma, making Mr. Shankar the majority owner.

• 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.

• American Megatrends Inc.(USA)
• Company Profile
• American Megatrends(India)