Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Written By: AMD Staff

On 1 May 1969, 55 years ago, AMD was founded by Jerry Sanders and seven other co-founders. Since then, AMD has ceaselessly pushed the boundary of what was possible in computing, making everything from the 64-bit version of x86, the first GHz CPU, the first large-core-count mainstream PC processor and more recently—the world’s first x86 processor with an NPU (neural processing unit).

With this spirit of innovation and leadership in mind, we wanted to revisit our heritage using AI1 and show how even you can bring your memories back to life with Ryzen™ AI2.

55 Years Later: AMD Is Advancing AI with Ryzen

The Ryzen™ 7040 and 8040 Series mobile processors feature an NPU, which is explicitly designed to handle emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads. Featuring up to 16 TOPs, the NPU allows the user to execute AI workloads with maximum power efficiency. Ryzen™ AI APUs also include the CPU and iGPU, which are used to handle on-demand AI tasks.

We used Adobe Photoshop Neural Filters and AI enhancement tools like Topaz Photo AI (which uses Microsoft DirectML AI framework optimized for AMD Ryzen AI platform) to restore and colorize some old historical photographs we had in our archives. All restoration work was done on a single AMD Ryzen AI-based laptop.

The first archival photo we restored was of the 12th employee: Rich Previte. Rich is the former CFO and President of AMD and is shown posing for the iconic photograph on historical AMD stock certificates. He worked at AMD for 30 years in various roles and positions.

This next image captures the moment company co-founders and employees broke ground in 1969 for the 915 DeGuigne building in Sunnyvale. AMD would stay headquartered here for more than 47 years, building a legacy of technology innovation before moving to its new headquarters in Santa Clara Square complex.

When Advanced Insights first captured the moment of merger between Monolithic Memories Inc and Advanced Micro Devices, it was in monochrome. Set against the backdrop of the 80s, this merger would allow the company to assimilate a significant amount of memory IP. Using Ryzen AI, we splashed some color back into the historic moment and see CEO Jerry Sanders and Monolithic CEO Irwin Federman, two prolific Silicon Valley leaders, ink the deal. See it below:

We also found a 14-year-old video produced for the the firm’s 40th Anniversary and upscaled it to 4k using Topaz Video AI:

1969 was quite a historic year: Mankind stepped onto the moon for the first time and NASA’s historic Apollo 11 mission went down in history as a landmark moment. Because color camera technology was not pervasive in 1969, some pictures remain in black and white (which is a misnomer for grayscale).

Since we were on the topic of colorization and restoration of memories, we thought we would bring some of these moments back to life with AMD Ryzen AI as well.

This picture shows the first stage of the Saturn V rocket of the Apollo 11 mission ready to be moved to the launch pad:

The moment the Apollo 11 mission took off from Kennedy Space Center, colorised:

Historic moments don’t have to be limited to the Apollo 11 mission, however, as old photographs or videos of our families and friends are just as easy to restore and colorise using these tools. AMD is committed to advancing AI, making the benefits of AI pervasive. AI PCs from AMD enable everyone to benefit from the growth in AI consumer applications. Click here to learn more about Ryzen AI.

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