Intel Corporation
Encyclopedia
Intel Corporation is an American multinational
semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in Santa Clara
, California, United States and the world's largest semiconductor
chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessor
s, the processors found in most personal computers. Intel was founded on July 18, 1968, as Integrated Electronics Corporation (though a common misconception is that "Intel" is from the word intelligence). Intel also makes motherboard
chipset
s, network interface controllers and integrated circuit
s, flash memory
, graphic chips
, embedded processors
and other devices related to communications and computing. Founded by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce
and Gordon Moore
and widely associated with the executive leadership and vision of Andrew Grove
, Intel combines advanced chip design capability with a leading-edge manufacturing capability. Though Intel was originally known primarily to engineers and technologists, its "Intel Inside" advertising campaign of the 1990s made it and its Pentium
processor household names.
Intel was an early developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, and this represented the majority of its business until 1981. Although Intel created the world's first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, it was not until the success of the personal computer (PC) that this became its primary business. During the 1990s, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs fostering the rapid growth of the computer industry
. During this period Intel became the dominant supplier of microprocessors for PCs, and was known for aggressive and sometimes illegal tactics in defense of its market position, particularly against Advanced Micro Devices
(AMD), as well as a struggle with Microsoft
for control over the direction of the PC industry.
The 2011 rankings of the world's 100 most powerful brands published by Millward Brown Optimor showed the company's brand value at number 58.
Intel has also begun research in electrical transmission and generation. Intel has recently introduced a 3-D transistor that may improve performance and energy efficiency. Intel will be mass producing this 3-D transistor, called Tri-Gate transistors, with their upcoming 22nm process in the near future. In 2011, SpectraWatt Inc., a solar cell spinoff of Intel, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11.
Intel was founded in Mountain View, California
in 1968 by Gordon E. Moore (of "Moore's Law
" fame, a chemist
and physicist
), Robert Noyce
(a physicist and co-inventor of the integrated circuit
), and Arthur Rock
(investor and venture capital
ist). Moore and Noyce had both come from Fairchild Semiconductor
were the first two employees, and Arthur was an investor only (not an employee), but was Chairman of the Board. The total initial investment in Intel was $2.5 million convertible debentures and $10,000 from Rock. Just 2 years later, Intel completed their initial public offering
(IPO) raising $6.8 million ($23.50 per share). Intel's third employee was Andy Grove
, a chemical engineer
, who later ran the company through much of the 1980s and the high-growth 1990s.
Moore and Noyce initially wanted to name the company "Moore Noyce". The name, however, was a homophone for "more noise" – an ill-suited name for an electronics
company, since noise in electronics
is usually very undesirable and typically associated with bad interference
. Instead they used the name NM Electronics for almost a year, before deciding to call their company Integrated Electronics or "Intel" for short. Since "Intel" was already trademarked by the hotel chain Intelco, they had to buy the rights for the name.
s and its first product in 1969 was the 3101 Schottky barrier diode TTL bipolar
64-bit static random-access memory (SRAM), which was nearly twice as fast as earlier Schottky diode implementations by Fairchild and the Electrotechnical Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan
. That same year Intel also produced the 3301 Schottky bipolar 1024-bit read-only memory
(ROM) and the first commercial metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) silicon gate SRAM chip, the 256-bit 1101. Intel's business grew during the 1970s as it expanded and improved its manufacturing processes and produced a wider range of products
, still dominated by various memory devices.
While Intel created the first commercially available microprocessor (Intel 4004)
in 1971 and one of the first microcomputer
s in 1972, by the early 1980s its business was dominated by dynamic random-access memory chips. However, increased competition from Japanese semiconductor manufacturers had, by 1983, dramatically reduced the profitability of this market, and the sudden success of the IBM
personal computer convinced then-CEO Andrew Grove to shift the company's focus to microprocessors, and to change fundamental aspects of that business model.
By the end of the 1980s this decision had proven successful. Buoyed by its fortuitous position as microprocessor supplier to IBM and its competitors within the rapidly growing personal computer market
, Intel embarked on a 10-year period of unprecedented growth as the primary (and most profitable) hardware supplier to the PC industry. By launching its Intel Inside marketing campaign in 1991, Intel was able to associate brand loyalty
with consumer selection, so that by the end of the 1990s, its line of Pentium processors had become a household name.
Intel had also for a number of years been embroiled in litigation. US law did not initially recognize intellectual property rights related to microprocessor topology (circuit layouts), until the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984
, a law sought by Intel and the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). During the late 1980s and 1990s (after this law was passed) Intel also sued companies that tried to develop competitor chips to the 80386
CPU. The lawsuits were noted to significantly burden the competition with legal bills, even if Intel lost the suits. Antitrust
allegations that had been simmering since the early 1990s and already been the cause of one lawsuit
against Intel in 1991, broke out again as AMD brought further claims
against Intel related to unfair competition
in 2004, and again in 2005
.
In 2005, CEO Paul Otellini
reorganized the company to refocus its core processor and chipset business on platforms (enterprise, digital home, digital health, and mobility) which led to the hiring of over 20,000 new employees. In September 2006 due to falling profits, the company announced a restructuring that resulted in layoffs of 10,500 employees or about 10 percent of its workforce by July 2006.
", the program was based upon annual alternation of microarchitecture
innovation and process innovation.
In 2006, Intel produced P6
and NetBurst products with reduced die size (65 nm). A year later it unveiled its Core microarchitecture to widespread critical acclaim; the product range was perceived as an exceptional leap in processor performance that at a stroke regained much of its leadership of the field. In 2008, we saw another "tick", Intel introduced the Penryn microarchitecture, undergoing a shrink from 65 nm to 45 nm, and the year after saw the release of its positively reviewed successor processor, Nehalem, followed by another silicon shrink to the 32nm process.
Intel was not the first microprocessor corporation to do this. For example, around 1996 graphics chip designers nVidia
had addressed its own business and marketplace difficulties by adopting a demanding 6-month internal product cycle whose products repeatedly outperformed market expectation.
assets was announced. Intel agreed to sell the XScale processor business to Marvell Technology Group
for an estimated $600 million (They bought them for $1.6billion) in cash and the assumption of unspecified liabilities. The move was intended to permit Intel to focus its resources on its core x86 and server businesses, and the acquisition
completed on November 9, 2006.
, a manufacturer of computer security technology. The purchase price was $7.68 billion, and the companies said that if the deal were approved, new products would be released early in 2011.
Less than two weeks later, the company announced the acquisition of Infineon Technologies
’ Wireless Solutions business. With the Infineon transaction, Intel plans to use the company’s technology in laptops, smart phones, netbooks, tablets and embedded computers in consumer products, eventually integrating its wireless modem into Intel’s silicon chips. Intel won the European Union regulatory approval for its acquisition of McAfee on January 26, 2011. Intel agreed to ensure that rival security firms have access to all necessary information that would allow their products to use Intel's chips and personal computers.
Following the closure of the McAfee
deal, Intel's workforce totals approximately 90,000, including (roughly) 12,000 software engineers.
In March 2011, Intel bought most of the assets of Cairo-based SySDSoft.
In July 2011, Intel announced that it has agreed to acquire Fulcrum Microsystems Inc., a company specializing in network switches. The company was previously included on EE Times list of 60 Emerging Startups.
On October 1, 2011, Intel reached a deal to acquire Telmap, an Israeli based navigation software company. The purchase price was not disclosed but Israeli media reports cited a $300 million to $350 million figure.
February 2011: The company will build a new microprocessor factory at Chandler, Arizona
which is expected to be completed in 2013 at a cost of $5 billion. It will accommodate 4,000 employees. The company produces three quarters of their products in the United States, although three quarters of the revenue come from overseas.
April 2011: Intel Corporation began a pilot project to produce smartphones with ZTE Corporation for China's domestic market. This project is intended to challenge the domination of ARM processors in mobile phones. The smartphone will be based on the Intel Atom
processor.
memory and random-access memory integrated circuits, and Intel grew to be a leader in the fiercely competitive DRAM, SRAM, and ROM
markets throughout the 1970s. Concurrently, Intel engineers Marcian Hoff
, Federico Faggin
, Stanley Mazor
and Masatoshi Shima
invented Intel's first microprocessor
. Originally developed for the Japanese company Busicom
to replace a number of ASICs
in a calculator already produced by Busicom, the Intel 4004
was introduced to the mass market on November 15, 1971, though the microprocessor did not become the core of Intel's business until the mid-1980s. (Note: Intel is usually given credit with Texas Instruments
for the almost-simultaneous invention of the microprocessor.)
microprocessor.
Until then, manufacture of complex integrated circuits was not reliable enough for customers to depend on a single supplier, but Grove began producing processors in three geographically distinct factories, and ceased licensing the chip designs to competitors such as Zilog
and AMD
. When the PC industry boomed in the late 1980s and 1990s, Intel was one of the primary beneficiaries.
Despite the ultimate importance of the microprocessor, the 4004
and its successors the 8008
and the 8080
were never major revenue contributors at Intel. As the next processor, the 8086 (and its variant the 8088) was completed in 1978, Intel embarked on a major marketing and sales campaign for that chip nicknamed "Operation Crush", and intended to win as many customers for the processor as possible. One design win was the newly created IBM PC
division, though the importance of this was not fully realized at the time.
IBM introduced its personal computer in 1981, and it was rapidly successful. In 1982, Intel created the 80286
microprocessor, which, two years later, was used in the IBM PC/AT. Compaq
, the first IBM PC "clone" manufacturer, produced a desktop system based on the faster 80286 processor in 1985 and in 1986 quickly followed with the first 80386
-based system, beating IBM and establishing a competitive market for PC-compatible systems and setting up Intel as a key component supplier.
In 1975 the company had started a project to develop a highly advanced 32-bit microprocessor, finally released in 1981 as the Intel iAPX 432
. The project was too ambitious and the processor was never able to meet its performance objectives, and it failed in the marketplace. Intel extended the x86 architecture to 32 bits instead.
dramatically redirected the company, closing much of its DRAM
business and directing resources to the microprocessor
business. Of perhaps greater importance was his decision to "single-source" the 386 microprocessor. Prior to this, microprocessor manufacturing was in its infancy, and manufacturing problems frequently reduced or stopped production, interrupting supplies to customers. To mitigate this risk, these customers typically insisted that multiple manufacturers produce chips they could use to ensure a consistent supply. The 8080 and 8086-series microprocessors were produced by several companies, notably AMD. Grove made the decision not to license the 386 design to other manufacturers, instead producing it in three geographically distinct factories in Santa Clara
, California; Hillsboro
, Oregon; and the Phoenix
, Arizona suburb of Chandler
; and convincing customers that this would ensure consistent delivery. As the success of Compaq's Deskpro 386 established the 386 as the dominant CPU choice, Intel achieved a position of near-exclusive dominance as its supplier. Profits from this funded rapid development of both higher-performance chip designs and higher-performance manufacturing capabilities, propelling Intel to a position of unquestioned leadership by the early 1990s.
microprocessor in 1989, and in 1990 formally established a second design team, designing the processors code-named "P5" and "P6" in parallel and committing to a major new processor every two years, versus the four or more years such designs had previously taken. The P5 was earlier known as "Operation Bicycle" referring to the cycles of the processor. The P5
was introduced in 1993 as the Intel Pentium, substituting a registered trademark name for the former part number (numbers, such as 486, are hard to register as a trademark). The P6 followed in 1995 as the Pentium Pro
and improved into the Pentium II
in 1997. New architectures were developed alternately in Santa Clara, California
and Hillsboro, Oregon
.
The Santa Clara design team embarked in 1993 on a successor to the x86 architecture, codenamed "P7". The first attempt was dropped a year later, but quickly revived in a cooperative program with Hewlett-Packard
engineers, though Intel soon took over primary design responsibility. The resulting implementation of the IA-64
64-bit architecture was the Itanium
, finally introduced in June 2001. The Itanium's performance running legacy x86 code did not achieve expectations, and it failed to compete effectively with 64-bit extensions to the original x86 architecture, introduced by AMD, named x86-64
(although Intel uses the name Intel 64, previously EM64T). As of 2009, Intel continues to develop and deploy the Itanium.
The Hillsboro team designed the Willamette processors (code-named P67 and P68) which were marketed as the Pentium 4.
Pentium microprocessor
. Under certain data dependent conditions, low order bits of the result of floating-point division operations would be incorrect, an error that can quickly compound in floating-point operations to much larger errors in subsequent calculations. Intel corrected the error in a future chip revision, but nonetheless declined to disclose it.
In October 1994, Dr. Thomas Nicely, Professor of Mathematics at Lynchburg College
independently discovered the bug
, and upon receiving no response from his inquiry to Intel, on October 30 posted a message on the Internet. Word of the bug spread quickly on the Internet and then to the industry press. Because the bug was easy to replicate by an average user (there was a sequence of numbers one could enter into the OS calculator to show the error), Intel's statements that it was minor and "not even an erratum" were not accepted by many computer users. During Thanksgiving 1994, The New York Times
ran a piece by journalist John Markoff
spotlighting the error. Intel changed its position and offered to replace every chip, quickly putting in place a large end-user support
organization. This resulted in a $500 million charge against Intel's 1994 revenue
.
Ironically, the "Pentium flaw" incident, Intel's response to it, and the surrounding media coverage propelled Intel from being a technology supplier generally unknown to most computer users to a household name. Dovetailing with an uptick in the "Intel Inside" campaign, the episode is considered to have been a positive event for Intel, changing some of its business practices to be more end-user focused and generating substantial public awareness, while avoiding a lasting negative impression.
and a few others making attempts at that. This campaign established Intel, which had been a component supplier little-known outside the PC industry, as a household name.
The second program is little-known: Intel's Systems Group began, in the early 1990s, manufacturing PC "motherboards", the main board component of a personal computer, and the one into which the processor (CPU) and memory (RAM) chips are plugged. Shortly after, Intel began manufacturing fully configured "white box" systems for the dozens of PC clone companies that rapidly sprang up. At its peak in the mid-1990s, Intel manufactured over 15% of all PCs, making it the third-largest supplier at the time.
During the 1990s, Intel's Architecture Lab
(IAL) was responsible for many of the hardware innovations of the personal computer, including the PCI
Bus, the PCI Express
(PCIe) bus, the Universal Serial Bus
(USB), Bluetooth
wireless interconnect, and the now-dominant architecture for multiprocessor servers. IAL's software efforts met with a more mixed fate; its video and graphics software was important in the development of software digital video, but later its efforts were largely overshadowed by competition from Microsoft
. The competition between Intel and Microsoft was revealed in testimony by IAL Vice-President Steven McGeady
at the Microsoft antitrust trial.
s, the X18-M and X25-M with 80GB and 160GB storage capacities. These MLC
-based drives received wide critical acclaim for their superior performance. Intel released their SLC-based Enterprise X25-E Extreme SSDs on October 15 that same year in capacities of 32GB and 64GB.
In July 2009, Intel refreshed their X25-M and X18-M lines by moving from a 50-nanometer to a 34-nanometer process. These new drives, dubbed by the press as the X25-M and X18-M G2 (or generation 2), reduced prices by up to 60 percent while offering lower latency and improved performance.
On February 1, 2010, Intel and Micron
announced that they were gearing up for production of NAND flash memory using a new 25-nanometer process. In March of that same year, Intel entered the budget SSD segment with their X25-V drives with an initial capacity of 40GB. The SSD 310, Intel's first mSATA drive was released on December 2010, providing X25-M G2 performance in a much smaller package.
March 2011 saw the introduction of two new SSD lines from Intel. The first, the SSD 510, uses a SATA 6 Gigabit per second interface
in order to reach speeds of up to 500 MegaBytes per second. The drive, which uses a controller from Marvell, was released using 34 nm NAND Flash and came in capacities of 120GB and 250GB. The second product announcement, the SSD 320, is the successor to Intel's earlier X25-M. It uses the new 25 nm process that Intel and Micron announced in 2010, and was released in capacities of 40 GB, 80 GB, 120 GB, 160 GB, 300 GB and 600 GB. Sequential read performance maxes out at 270 MB/s due to the older SATA 3 Gbit/s interface, and sequential write performance varies greatly based on the size of the drive with sequential write performance of the 40 GB model peaking at 45 MB/s and the 600 GB at 220 MB/s.
Micron and Intel announced that they were producing their first 20 nm MLC NAND flash on April 14, 2011.
, in order to design and produce parallel computers
based on Intel microprocessors connected in hypercube
topologies. In 1992 the name was changed to the Intel Supercomputing Systems Division, and development of the iWarp
architecture was also subsumed. The division designed several supercomputer
systems, including the Intel iPSC
/1, iPSC/2
, iPSC/860
, Paragon
and ASCI Red
.
demand growth beginning in 2000 and the rise of the low cost PC. By the end of the 1990s, microprocessor
performance had outstripped software demand for that CPU power. Aside from high-end server systems and software, demand for which dropped with the end of the "dot-com bubble
", consumer systems ran effectively on increasingly low-cost systems after 2000. Intel's strategy of producing ever-more-powerful processors and obsoleting their predecessors stumbled, leaving an opportunity for rapid gains by competitors, notably AMD. This in turn lowered the profitability of the processor line and ended an era of unprecedented dominance of the PC hardware by Intel.
Intel's dominance in the x86 microprocessor market led to numerous charges of antitrust
violations over the years, including FTC
investigations in both the late 1980s and in 1999, and civil actions such as the 1997 suit by Digital Equipment Corporation
(DEC) and a patent suit by Intergraph
. Intel's market dominance (at one time it controlled over 85% of the market for 32-bit x86 microprocessors) combined with Intel's own hardball legal tactics (such as its infamous 338 patent suit versus PC manufacturers) made it an attractive target for litigation, but few of the lawsuits ever amounted to anything.
A case of industrial espionage
arose in 1995 that involved both Intel and AMD. Bill Gaede
, an Argentine
formerly employed both at AMD and at Intel's Arizona
plant, was arrested for attempting in 1993 to sell the i486 and P5
Pentium designs to AMD and to certain foreign powers. Gaede videotaped data from his computer screen at Intel and mailed it to AMD, which immediately alerted Intel and authorities, resulting in Gaede's arrest. Gaede was convicted and sentenced to 33 months in prison in June 1996.
announced that Apple would be transitioning from its long favored PowerPC
architecture to the Intel x86 architecture, because the future PowerPC road map was unable to satisfy Apple's needs. The first Macintosh
computers containing Intel CPUs were announced on January 10, 2006, and Apple had its entire line of consumer Macs running on Intel processors by early August 2006. The Apple Xserve server was updated to Intel Xeon
processors from November 2006, and was offered in a configuration similar to Apple's Mac Pro.
Duo processor featuring six African American runners appearing to bow down to a Caucasian male inside of an office setting (due to the posture taken by runners on starting blocks
). According to Nancy Bhagat, Vice President of Intel Corporate Marketing, the general public found the ad to be "insensitive and insulting." The campaign was quickly pulled and several Intel executives made public apologies on the corporate website.
is the company's first low-cost netbook
computer. One of the models, designed by TEAMS Design
http://www.teamsdesign.com/com/ in their Shanghai
office, won many design awards such as the Appliance Design EID Award, 2008 Spark Award and iF
2008 China Award.
Intel planned to introduce Medfield – a processor for tablets and smartphones – to the market in 2012, as an effort to compete with ARM. As a 32-nanometer processor, Medfield is designed to be energy-efficient, which is one of the core features in ARM’s chips. Agam Shah, IDG News. "Intel's New Smartphone Chip Is Key ARM Battle." Jun 7, 2011. Retrieved Jul 8, 2011.
At the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) 2011 in San Francisco, Intel's partnership with Google was announced. By January 2012, Google's Android 2.3 will use Intel's Atom microprocessor.
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in Santa Clara
Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. The city is the site of the eighth of 21 California missions, Mission Santa Clara de Asís, and was named after the mission. The Mission and Mission Gardens are located on the...
, California, United States and the world's largest semiconductor
Semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...
chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
s, the processors found in most personal computers. Intel was founded on July 18, 1968, as Integrated Electronics Corporation (though a common misconception is that "Intel" is from the word intelligence). Intel also makes motherboard
Motherboard
In personal computers, a motherboard is the central printed circuit board in many modern computers and holds many of the crucial components of the system, providing connectors for other peripherals. The motherboard is sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, or, on Apple...
chipset
Chipset
A chipset, PC chipset, or chip set refers to a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together. They are usually marketed as a single product.- Computers :...
s, network interface controllers and integrated circuit
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
s, flash memory
Flash memory
Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It was developed from EEPROM and must be erased in fairly large blocks before these can be rewritten with new data...
, graphic chips
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
, embedded processors
Embedded system
An embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal...
and other devices related to communications and computing. Founded by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce
Robert Noyce
Robert Norton Noyce , nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968...
and Gordon Moore
Gordon Moore
Gordon Earle Moore is the co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation and the author of Moore's Law .-Life and career:...
and widely associated with the executive leadership and vision of Andrew Grove
Andrew Grove
Andrew Stephen Grove , is a Hungarian-born Jewish-American Businessman/ Engineer, Author & a science pioneer in the semiconductor industry. He escaped from Communist-controlled Hungary at the age of 20 and moved to the U.S., where he finished his education...
, Intel combines advanced chip design capability with a leading-edge manufacturing capability. Though Intel was originally known primarily to engineers and technologists, its "Intel Inside" advertising campaign of the 1990s made it and its Pentium
Pentium compatible processor
A Pentium compatible processor is a 32-bit processor computer chip which supports the instructions in the IA-32 instruction set that were implemented by the Intel P5 Pentium processor family...
processor household names.
Intel was an early developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, and this represented the majority of its business until 1981. Although Intel created the world's first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, it was not until the success of the personal computer (PC) that this became its primary business. During the 1990s, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs fostering the rapid growth of the computer industry
Computer industry
Computer industry is a collective term used to describe the whole range of businesses involved in developing computer software, designing computer hardware and computer networking infrastructures, the manufacture of computer components and the provision of information technology services.-See...
. During this period Intel became the dominant supplier of microprocessors for PCs, and was known for aggressive and sometimes illegal tactics in defense of its market position, particularly against Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. or AMD is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for commercial and consumer markets...
(AMD), as well as a struggle with Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
for control over the direction of the PC industry.
The 2011 rankings of the world's 100 most powerful brands published by Millward Brown Optimor showed the company's brand value at number 58.
Intel has also begun research in electrical transmission and generation. Intel has recently introduced a 3-D transistor that may improve performance and energy efficiency. Intel will be mass producing this 3-D transistor, called Tri-Gate transistors, with their upcoming 22nm process in the near future. In 2011, SpectraWatt Inc., a solar cell spinoff of Intel, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11.
Origins
Mountain View, California
-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
in 1968 by Gordon E. Moore (of "Moore's Law
Moore's Law
Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware: the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years....
" fame, a chemist
Chemist
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
and physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
), Robert Noyce
Robert Noyce
Robert Norton Noyce , nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968...
(a physicist and co-inventor of the integrated circuit
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
), and Arthur Rock
Arthur Rock
Arthur Rock is an American venture capitalist of Silicon Valley, California. He was an early investor in major firms including Intel, Apple Computer, Scientific Data Systems and Teledyne....
(investor and venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
ist). Moore and Noyce had both come from Fairchild Semiconductor
Fairchild Semiconductor
Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. is an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 1957, it was a pioneer in transistor and integrated circuit manufacturing...
were the first two employees, and Arthur was an investor only (not an employee), but was Chairman of the Board. The total initial investment in Intel was $2.5 million convertible debentures and $10,000 from Rock. Just 2 years later, Intel completed their initial public offering
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
(IPO) raising $6.8 million ($23.50 per share). Intel's third employee was Andy Grove
Andrew Grove
Andrew Stephen Grove , is a Hungarian-born Jewish-American Businessman/ Engineer, Author & a science pioneer in the semiconductor industry. He escaped from Communist-controlled Hungary at the age of 20 and moved to the U.S., where he finished his education...
, a chemical engineer
Chemical engineer
In the field of engineering, a chemical engineer is the profession in which one works principally in the chemical industry to convert basic raw materials into a variety of products, and deals with the design and operation of plants and equipment to perform such work...
, who later ran the company through much of the 1980s and the high-growth 1990s.
Moore and Noyce initially wanted to name the company "Moore Noyce". The name, however, was a homophone for "more noise" – an ill-suited name for an electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
company, since noise in electronics
Electronic noise
Electronic noise is a random fluctuation in an electrical signal, a characteristic of all electronic circuits. Noise generated by electronic devices varies greatly, as it can be produced by several different effects...
is usually very undesirable and typically associated with bad interference
Electromagnetic interference
Electromagnetic interference is disturbance that affects an electrical circuit due to either electromagnetic induction or electromagnetic radiation emitted from an external source. The disturbance may interrupt, obstruct, or otherwise degrade or limit the effective performance of the circuit...
. Instead they used the name NM Electronics for almost a year, before deciding to call their company Integrated Electronics or "Intel" for short. Since "Intel" was already trademarked by the hotel chain Intelco, they had to buy the rights for the name.
Early history
At its founding, Intel was distinguished by its ability to make semiconductorSemiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...
s and its first product in 1969 was the 3101 Schottky barrier diode TTL bipolar
Bipolar junction transistor
|- align = "center"| || PNP|- align = "center"| || NPNA bipolar transistor is a three-terminal electronic device constructed of doped semiconductor material and may be used in amplifying or switching applications. Bipolar transistors are so named because their operation involves both electrons...
64-bit static random-access memory (SRAM), which was nearly twice as fast as earlier Schottky diode implementations by Fairchild and the Electrotechnical Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan
Tsukuba, Ibaraki
is a city located in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. It is known as the location of the , a planned city developed in the 1960s.As of 2008, the city has an estimated population of 207,394 and a population density of 730 persons per km². Its total area is 284.07 km².Mount Tsukuba, particularly well-known...
. That same year Intel also produced the 3301 Schottky bipolar 1024-bit read-only memory
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
(ROM) and the first commercial metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) silicon gate SRAM chip, the 256-bit 1101. Intel's business grew during the 1970s as it expanded and improved its manufacturing processes and produced a wider range of products
Product (business)
In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce ' lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced...
, still dominated by various memory devices.
While Intel created the first commercially available microprocessor (Intel 4004)
Intel 4004
The Intel 4004 was a 4-bit central processing unit released by Intel Corporation in 1971. It was the first complete CPU on one chip, and also the first commercially available microprocessor...
in 1971 and one of the first microcomputer
Microcomputer
A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers...
s in 1972, by the early 1980s its business was dominated by dynamic random-access memory chips. However, increased competition from Japanese semiconductor manufacturers had, by 1983, dramatically reduced the profitability of this market, and the sudden success of the IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
personal computer convinced then-CEO Andrew Grove to shift the company's focus to microprocessors, and to change fundamental aspects of that business model.
By the end of the 1980s this decision had proven successful. Buoyed by its fortuitous position as microprocessor supplier to IBM and its competitors within the rapidly growing personal computer market
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
, Intel embarked on a 10-year period of unprecedented growth as the primary (and most profitable) hardware supplier to the PC industry. By launching its Intel Inside marketing campaign in 1991, Intel was able to associate brand loyalty
Brand loyalty
The American Marketing Association defines brand loyalty as:# The situation in which a consumer generally buys the same manufacturer-originated product or service repeatedly over time rather than buying from multiple suppliers within the category .# The degree to which a consumer consistently...
with consumer selection, so that by the end of the 1990s, its line of Pentium processors had become a household name.
Slowing demand and challenges to dominance
After 2000, growth in demand for high-end microprocessors slowed. Competitors, notably AMD (Intel's largest competitor in its primary x86 architecture market), garnered significant market share, initially in low-end and mid-range processors but ultimately across the product range, and Intel's dominant position in its core market was greatly reduced. In the early 2000s then-CEO Craig Barrett attempted to diversify the company's business beyond semiconductors, but few of these activities were ultimately successful.Intel had also for a number of years been embroiled in litigation. US law did not initially recognize intellectual property rights related to microprocessor topology (circuit layouts), until the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984
Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984
The Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 is an act of the US Congress that makes the layouts of integrated circuits legally protected upon registration, and hence illegal to copy without permission.-Background:...
, a law sought by Intel and the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). During the late 1980s and 1990s (after this law was passed) Intel also sued companies that tried to develop competitor chips to the 80386
Intel 80386
The Intel 80386, also known as the i386, or just 386, was a 32-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were used as the central processing unit of many workstations and high-end personal computers of the time...
CPU. The lawsuits were noted to significantly burden the competition with legal bills, even if Intel lost the suits. Antitrust
Antitrust
The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...
allegations that had been simmering since the early 1990s and already been the cause of one lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
against Intel in 1991, broke out again as AMD brought further claims
Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., , is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving , which authorizes United States district courts to enforce discovery requests made in connection with litigation being conducted in foreign tribunals...
against Intel related to unfair competition
Unfair competition
Unfair competition in a sense means that the competitors compete on unequal terms, because favourable or disadvantageous conditions are applied to some competitors but not to others; or that the actions of some competitors actively harm the position of others with respect to their ability to...
in 2004, and again in 2005
AMD v. Intel
AMD v. Intel was an antitrust lawsuit, filed by Advanced Micro Devices against Intel Corporation in June 2005.- History :AMD launched the lawsuit against its rival Intel, the world's leading microprocessor manufacturer...
.
In 2005, CEO Paul Otellini
Paul Otellini
Paul S. Otellini is an American businessman current president and chief executive of Intel. He is also on the board of directors of Google.- Early life and Education :...
reorganized the company to refocus its core processor and chipset business on platforms (enterprise, digital home, digital health, and mobility) which led to the hiring of over 20,000 new employees. In September 2006 due to falling profits, the company announced a restructuring that resulted in layoffs of 10,500 employees or about 10 percent of its workforce by July 2006.
Regaining of momentum
Faced with the need to regain lost marketplace momentum, Intel unveiled its new product development model to regain its prior technological lead. Known as its "tick-tock modelIntel Tick-Tock
"Tick-Tock" is a model, of Jones Farm 5 and adopted by chip manufacturer Intel Corporation since 2007 to follow every microarchitectural change with shrinking of the process technology. Every "tick" is a shrinking of process technology of the previous microarchitecture and every "tock" is a new...
", the program was based upon annual alternation of microarchitecture
Microarchitecture
In computer engineering, microarchitecture , also called computer organization, is the way a given instruction set architecture is implemented on a processor. A given ISA may be implemented with different microarchitectures. Implementations might vary due to different goals of a given design or...
innovation and process innovation.
In 2006, Intel produced P6
P6 (microarchitecture)
The P6 microarchitecture is the sixth generation Intel x86 microarchitecture, implemented by the Pentium Pro microprocessor that was introduced in November 1995. It is sometimes referred to as i686. It was succeeded by the NetBurst microarchitecture in 2000, but eventually revived in the Pentium M...
and NetBurst products with reduced die size (65 nm). A year later it unveiled its Core microarchitecture to widespread critical acclaim; the product range was perceived as an exceptional leap in processor performance that at a stroke regained much of its leadership of the field. In 2008, we saw another "tick", Intel introduced the Penryn microarchitecture, undergoing a shrink from 65 nm to 45 nm, and the year after saw the release of its positively reviewed successor processor, Nehalem, followed by another silicon shrink to the 32nm process.
Intel was not the first microprocessor corporation to do this. For example, around 1996 graphics chip designers nVidia
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
had addressed its own business and marketplace difficulties by adopting a demanding 6-month internal product cycle whose products repeatedly outperformed market expectation.
Sale of XScale processor business
On June 27, 2006, the sale of Intel's XScaleXScale
The XScale, a microprocessor core, is Intel's and Marvell's implementation of the ARMv5 architecture, and consists of several distinct families: IXP, IXC, IOP, PXA and CE . Intel sold the PXA family to Marvell Technology Group in June 2006....
assets was announced. Intel agreed to sell the XScale processor business to Marvell Technology Group
Marvell Technology Group
Marvell is an American producer of storage, communications and consumer semiconductor products.Founded in 1995, Marvell Technology Group Ltd. has operations worldwide and approximately 5,700 employees. Marvell’s U.S. operating subsidiary is based in Santa Clara, California and Marvell has...
for an estimated $600 million (They bought them for $1.6billion) in cash and the assumption of unspecified liabilities. The move was intended to permit Intel to focus its resources on its core x86 and server businesses, and the acquisition
Mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...
completed on November 9, 2006.
Acquisitions
In August 2010, Intel announced two major acquisitions. On August 19, Intel announced that it planned to purchase McAfeeMcAfee
McAfee, Inc. is a computer security company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, USA. It markets software and services to home users, businesses and the public sector. On August 19, 2010, electronics company Intel agreed to purchase McAfee for $7.68 billion...
, a manufacturer of computer security technology. The purchase price was $7.68 billion, and the companies said that if the deal were approved, new products would be released early in 2011.
Less than two weeks later, the company announced the acquisition of Infineon Technologies
Infineon Technologies
Infineon Technologies AG is a German semiconductor manufacturer and was founded on April 1, 1999, when the semiconductor operations of the parent company Siemens AG were spun off to form a separate legal entity. , Infineon has 25,149 employees worldwide...
’ Wireless Solutions business. With the Infineon transaction, Intel plans to use the company’s technology in laptops, smart phones, netbooks, tablets and embedded computers in consumer products, eventually integrating its wireless modem into Intel’s silicon chips. Intel won the European Union regulatory approval for its acquisition of McAfee on January 26, 2011. Intel agreed to ensure that rival security firms have access to all necessary information that would allow their products to use Intel's chips and personal computers.
Following the closure of the McAfee
McAfee
McAfee, Inc. is a computer security company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, USA. It markets software and services to home users, businesses and the public sector. On August 19, 2010, electronics company Intel agreed to purchase McAfee for $7.68 billion...
deal, Intel's workforce totals approximately 90,000, including (roughly) 12,000 software engineers.
In March 2011, Intel bought most of the assets of Cairo-based SySDSoft.
In July 2011, Intel announced that it has agreed to acquire Fulcrum Microsystems Inc., a company specializing in network switches. The company was previously included on EE Times list of 60 Emerging Startups.
On October 1, 2011, Intel reached a deal to acquire Telmap, an Israeli based navigation software company. The purchase price was not disclosed but Israeli media reports cited a $300 million to $350 million figure.
Expansions
In 2008, Intel spun off key assets of a solar startup business effort to form an independent company, SpetraWatt Inc. However, as of 2011, SpectraWatt has filed for bankruptcy.February 2011: The company will build a new microprocessor factory at Chandler, Arizona
Chandler, Arizona
-Demographics:As of the Census of 2010, there were 236,123 people, 86,924 households, and 60,212 families residing in the city. The racial makeup of the city was 73.3% White, 4.8% Black or African American, 1.5% Native American, 8.2% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 21.9% Hispanic or Latino, and 8.3%...
which is expected to be completed in 2013 at a cost of $5 billion. It will accommodate 4,000 employees. The company produces three quarters of their products in the United States, although three quarters of the revenue come from overseas.
April 2011: Intel Corporation began a pilot project to produce smartphones with ZTE Corporation for China's domestic market. This project is intended to challenge the domination of ARM processors in mobile phones. The smartphone will be based on the Intel Atom
Intel Atom
Intel Atom is the brand name for a line of ultra-low-voltage x86 and x86-64 CPUs from Intel, designed in 45 nm CMOS and used mainly in netbooks, nettops, embedded application ranging from health care to advanced robotics and Mobile Internet devices...
processor.
SRAMS and the microprocessor
The company's first products were shift registerShift register
In digital circuits, a shift register is a cascade of flip flops, sharing the same clock, which has the output of any one but the last flip-flop connected to the "data" input of the next one in the chain, resulting in a circuit that shifts by one position the one-dimensional "bit array" stored in...
memory and random-access memory integrated circuits, and Intel grew to be a leader in the fiercely competitive DRAM, SRAM, and ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
markets throughout the 1970s. Concurrently, Intel engineers Marcian Hoff
Marcian Hoff
Marcian Edward "Ted" Hoff, Jr. , is one of the inventors of the microprocessor. Hoff joined Intel in 1967 as employee number 12, and is credited with coming up with the idea of using a "universal processor" rather than a variety of custom-designed circuits. His insight started the microprocessor...
, Federico Faggin
Federico Faggin
Federico Faggin , who received in 2010 the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by Barack Obama, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on scientists, engineers, and inventors, at the White House in Washington, is an Italian-born and naturalized U.S...
, Stanley Mazor
Stanley Mazor
Stanley Mazor is an American engineer who was born on 22 October 1941 in Chicago, Illinois. He was one of the designers of the world's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, together with Ted Hoff, Masatoshi Shima, and Federico Faggin.-Early years:...
and Masatoshi Shima
Masatoshi Shima
is a Japanese electronics engineer, who was one of the designers of the world's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, along with Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stanley Mazor....
invented Intel's first microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
. Originally developed for the Japanese company Busicom
Busicom
Busicom was a Japanese company that owned the rights to the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, which they created in partnership with Intel in 1970....
to replace a number of ASICs
Application-specific integrated circuit
An application-specific integrated circuit is an integrated circuit customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use. For example, a chip designed solely to run a cell phone is an ASIC...
in a calculator already produced by Busicom, the Intel 4004
Intel 4004
The Intel 4004 was a 4-bit central processing unit released by Intel Corporation in 1971. It was the first complete CPU on one chip, and also the first commercially available microprocessor...
was introduced to the mass market on November 15, 1971, though the microprocessor did not become the core of Intel's business until the mid-1980s. (Note: Intel is usually given credit with Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
for the almost-simultaneous invention of the microprocessor.)
From DRAM to microprocessors
In 1983, at the dawn of the personal computer era, Intel's profits came under increased pressure from Japanese memory-chip manufacturers, and then-President Andy Grove drove the company into a focus on microprocessors. Grove described this transition in the book Only the Paranoid Survive. A key element of his plan was the notion, then considered radical, of becoming the single source for successors to the popular 8086Intel 8086
The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and mid-1978, when it was released. The 8086 gave rise to the x86 architecture of Intel's future processors...
microprocessor.
Until then, manufacture of complex integrated circuits was not reliable enough for customers to depend on a single supplier, but Grove began producing processors in three geographically distinct factories, and ceased licensing the chip designs to competitors such as Zilog
Zilog
Zilog, Inc., previously known as ZiLOG , is a manufacturer of 8-bit and 24-bit microcontrollers, and is most famous for its Intel 8080-compatible Z80 series.-History:...
and AMD
Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. or AMD is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for commercial and consumer markets...
. When the PC industry boomed in the late 1980s and 1990s, Intel was one of the primary beneficiaries.
Intel, x86 processors, and the IBM PC
Intel 4004
The Intel 4004 was a 4-bit central processing unit released by Intel Corporation in 1971. It was the first complete CPU on one chip, and also the first commercially available microprocessor...
and its successors the 8008
Intel 8008
The Intel 8008 was an early byte-oriented microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and introduced in April 1972. It was an 8-bit CPU with an external 14-bit address bus that could address 16KB of memory...
and the 8080
Intel 8080
The Intel 8080 was the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and was released in April 1974. It was an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibility...
were never major revenue contributors at Intel. As the next processor, the 8086 (and its variant the 8088) was completed in 1978, Intel embarked on a major marketing and sales campaign for that chip nicknamed "Operation Crush", and intended to win as many customers for the processor as possible. One design win was the newly created IBM PC
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
division, though the importance of this was not fully realized at the time.
IBM introduced its personal computer in 1981, and it was rapidly successful. In 1982, Intel created the 80286
Intel 80286
The Intel 80286 , introduced on 1 February 1982, was a 16-bit x86 microprocessor with 134,000 transistors. Like its contemporary simpler cousin, the 80186, it could correctly execute most software written for the earlier Intel 8086 and 8088...
microprocessor, which, two years later, was used in the IBM PC/AT. Compaq
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
, the first IBM PC "clone" manufacturer, produced a desktop system based on the faster 80286 processor in 1985 and in 1986 quickly followed with the first 80386
Intel 80386
The Intel 80386, also known as the i386, or just 386, was a 32-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were used as the central processing unit of many workstations and high-end personal computers of the time...
-based system, beating IBM and establishing a competitive market for PC-compatible systems and setting up Intel as a key component supplier.
In 1975 the company had started a project to develop a highly advanced 32-bit microprocessor, finally released in 1981 as the Intel iAPX 432
Intel iAPX 432
The Intel iAPX 432 was a commercially unsuccessful 32-bit microprocessor architecture, introduced in 1981.The project was Intel's first 32-bit microprocessor design, and intended to be the company's main product line for the 1980s. Many advanced multitasking and memory management features were...
. The project was too ambitious and the processor was never able to meet its performance objectives, and it failed in the marketplace. Intel extended the x86 architecture to 32 bits instead.
386 microprocessor
During this period Andrew GroveAndrew Grove
Andrew Stephen Grove , is a Hungarian-born Jewish-American Businessman/ Engineer, Author & a science pioneer in the semiconductor industry. He escaped from Communist-controlled Hungary at the age of 20 and moved to the U.S., where he finished his education...
dramatically redirected the company, closing much of its DRAM
Dram
Dram or DRAM may refer to:As a unit of measure:* Dram , an imperial unit of mass and volume* Armenian dram, a monetary unit* Dirham, a unit of currency in several Arab nationsOther uses:...
business and directing resources to the microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
business. Of perhaps greater importance was his decision to "single-source" the 386 microprocessor. Prior to this, microprocessor manufacturing was in its infancy, and manufacturing problems frequently reduced or stopped production, interrupting supplies to customers. To mitigate this risk, these customers typically insisted that multiple manufacturers produce chips they could use to ensure a consistent supply. The 8080 and 8086-series microprocessors were produced by several companies, notably AMD. Grove made the decision not to license the 386 design to other manufacturers, instead producing it in three geographically distinct factories in Santa Clara
Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. The city is the site of the eighth of 21 California missions, Mission Santa Clara de Asís, and was named after the mission. The Mission and Mission Gardens are located on the...
, California; Hillsboro
Hillsboro, Oregon
Hillsboro is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and is the county seat of Washington County. Lying in the Tualatin Valley on the west side of the Portland metropolitan area, the city is home to many high-technology companies, such as Intel, that compose what has become known as the...
, Oregon; and the Phoenix
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...
, Arizona suburb of Chandler
Chandler, Arizona
-Demographics:As of the Census of 2010, there were 236,123 people, 86,924 households, and 60,212 families residing in the city. The racial makeup of the city was 73.3% White, 4.8% Black or African American, 1.5% Native American, 8.2% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 21.9% Hispanic or Latino, and 8.3%...
; and convincing customers that this would ensure consistent delivery. As the success of Compaq's Deskpro 386 established the 386 as the dominant CPU choice, Intel achieved a position of near-exclusive dominance as its supplier. Profits from this funded rapid development of both higher-performance chip designs and higher-performance manufacturing capabilities, propelling Intel to a position of unquestioned leadership by the early 1990s.
486, Pentium, and Itanium
Intel introduced the 486Intel 80486
The Intel 80486 microprocessor was a higher performance follow up on the Intel 80386. Introduced in 1989, it was the first tightly pipelined x86 design as well as the first x86 chip to use more than a million transistors, due to a large on-chip cache and an integrated floating point unit...
microprocessor in 1989, and in 1990 formally established a second design team, designing the processors code-named "P5" and "P6" in parallel and committing to a major new processor every two years, versus the four or more years such designs had previously taken. The P5 was earlier known as "Operation Bicycle" referring to the cycles of the processor. The P5
P5 (microarchitecture)
The original Pentium microprocessor was introduced on March 22, 1993. Its microarchitecture, deemed P5, was Intel's fifth-generation and first superscalar x86 microarchitecture. As a direct extension of the 80486 architecture, it included dual integer pipelines, a faster FPU, wider data bus,...
was introduced in 1993 as the Intel Pentium, substituting a registered trademark name for the former part number (numbers, such as 486, are hard to register as a trademark). The P6 followed in 1995 as the Pentium Pro
Pentium Pro
The Pentium Pro is a sixth-generation x86 microprocessor developed and manufactured by Intel introduced in November 1, 1995 . It introduced the P6 microarchitecture and was originally intended to replace the original Pentium in a full range of applications...
and improved into the Pentium II
Pentium II
The Pentium II brand refers to Intel's sixth-generation microarchitecture and x86-compatible microprocessors introduced on May 7, 1997. Containing 7.5 million transistors, the Pentium II featured an improved version of the first P6-generation core of the Pentium Pro, which contained 5.5 million...
in 1997. New architectures were developed alternately in Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. The city is the site of the eighth of 21 California missions, Mission Santa Clara de Asís, and was named after the mission. The Mission and Mission Gardens are located on the...
and Hillsboro, Oregon
Hillsboro, Oregon
Hillsboro is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and is the county seat of Washington County. Lying in the Tualatin Valley on the west side of the Portland metropolitan area, the city is home to many high-technology companies, such as Intel, that compose what has become known as the...
.
The Santa Clara design team embarked in 1993 on a successor to the x86 architecture, codenamed "P7". The first attempt was dropped a year later, but quickly revived in a cooperative program with Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
engineers, though Intel soon took over primary design responsibility. The resulting implementation of the IA-64
Itanium
Itanium is a family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture . Intel markets the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance computing systems...
64-bit architecture was the Itanium
Itanium
Itanium is a family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture . Intel markets the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance computing systems...
, finally introduced in June 2001. The Itanium's performance running legacy x86 code did not achieve expectations, and it failed to compete effectively with 64-bit extensions to the original x86 architecture, introduced by AMD, named x86-64
X86-64
x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. It supports vastly larger virtual and physical address spaces than are possible on x86, thereby allowing programmers to conveniently work with much larger data sets. x86-64 also provides 64-bit general purpose registers and numerous other...
(although Intel uses the name Intel 64, previously EM64T). As of 2009, Intel continues to develop and deploy the Itanium.
The Hillsboro team designed the Willamette processors (code-named P67 and P68) which were marketed as the Pentium 4.
Pentium flaw
In June 1994, Intel engineers discovered a flaw in the floating-point math subsection of the P5P5 (microarchitecture)
The original Pentium microprocessor was introduced on March 22, 1993. Its microarchitecture, deemed P5, was Intel's fifth-generation and first superscalar x86 microarchitecture. As a direct extension of the 80486 architecture, it included dual integer pipelines, a faster FPU, wider data bus,...
Pentium microprocessor
Pentium
The original Pentium microprocessor was introduced on March 22, 1993. Its microarchitecture, deemed P5, was Intel's fifth-generation and first superscalar x86 microarchitecture. As a direct extension of the 80486 architecture, it included dual integer pipelines, a faster FPU, wider data bus,...
. Under certain data dependent conditions, low order bits of the result of floating-point division operations would be incorrect, an error that can quickly compound in floating-point operations to much larger errors in subsequent calculations. Intel corrected the error in a future chip revision, but nonetheless declined to disclose it.
In October 1994, Dr. Thomas Nicely, Professor of Mathematics at Lynchburg College
Lynchburg College
Lynchburg College is a private college in Lynchburg, Virginia, USA, related by covenant to the Christian Church with approximately 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students. The Princeton Review lists it as one of the 368 best colleges in the nation...
independently discovered the bug
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
, and upon receiving no response from his inquiry to Intel, on October 30 posted a message on the Internet. Word of the bug spread quickly on the Internet and then to the industry press. Because the bug was easy to replicate by an average user (there was a sequence of numbers one could enter into the OS calculator to show the error), Intel's statements that it was minor and "not even an erratum" were not accepted by many computer users. During Thanksgiving 1994, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
ran a piece by journalist John Markoff
John Markoff
John Markoff is a journalist best known for his work at The New York Times, and a book and series of articles about the 1990s pursuit and capture of hacker Kevin Mitnick.- Biography :...
spotlighting the error. Intel changed its position and offered to replace every chip, quickly putting in place a large end-user support
Technical support
Technical support or tech support refers to a range of services by which enterprises provide assistance to users of technology products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods...
organization. This resulted in a $500 million charge against Intel's 1994 revenue
Revenue
In business, revenue is income that a company receives from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers. In many countries, such as the United Kingdom, revenue is referred to as turnover....
.
Ironically, the "Pentium flaw" incident, Intel's response to it, and the surrounding media coverage propelled Intel from being a technology supplier generally unknown to most computer users to a household name. Dovetailing with an uptick in the "Intel Inside" campaign, the episode is considered to have been a positive event for Intel, changing some of its business practices to be more end-user focused and generating substantial public awareness, while avoiding a lasting negative impression.
"Intel Inside" and other 1990s programs
During this period, Intel undertook two major supporting programs. The first is widely known: the 1991 "Intel Inside" marketing and branding campaign. The idea of ingredient branding was new at the time with only NutrasweetNutraSweet
The NutraSweet Company makes and sells NutraSweet, their trademarked brand name for the artificial sweetener aspartame, and Neotame.Aspartame was accidentally discovered in 1965 by James M. Schlatter, a chemist with a master's degree working under Dr. Kurt Rorig, PhD, in charge of new drug research...
and a few others making attempts at that. This campaign established Intel, which had been a component supplier little-known outside the PC industry, as a household name.
The second program is little-known: Intel's Systems Group began, in the early 1990s, manufacturing PC "motherboards", the main board component of a personal computer, and the one into which the processor (CPU) and memory (RAM) chips are plugged. Shortly after, Intel began manufacturing fully configured "white box" systems for the dozens of PC clone companies that rapidly sprang up. At its peak in the mid-1990s, Intel manufactured over 15% of all PCs, making it the third-largest supplier at the time.
During the 1990s, Intel's Architecture Lab
Intel Architecture Labs
Intel Architecture Labs, also known as IAL, was the personal computer system research and development arm of Intel Corporation during the 1990s...
(IAL) was responsible for many of the hardware innovations of the personal computer, including the PCI
Peripheral Component Interconnect
Conventional PCI is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer...
Bus, the PCI Express
PCI Express
PCI Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards...
(PCIe) bus, the Universal Serial Bus
Universal Serial Bus
USB is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices....
(USB), Bluetooth
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...
wireless interconnect, and the now-dominant architecture for multiprocessor servers. IAL's software efforts met with a more mixed fate; its video and graphics software was important in the development of software digital video, but later its efforts were largely overshadowed by competition from Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
. The competition between Intel and Microsoft was revealed in testimony by IAL Vice-President Steven McGeady
Steven McGeady
Steven McGeady is a former Intel executive best known as a witness in the Microsoft antitrust trial. His notes contained colorful quotes by Microsoft executives threatening to "cut off Netscape's air supply" and Bill Gates' guess that "this anti-trust thing will blow over"...
at the Microsoft antitrust trial.
Solid-state drives (SSD)
On September 8, 2008, Intel began shipping its first mainstream solid-state driveSolid-state drive
A solid-state drive , sometimes called a solid-state disk or electronic disk, is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data with the intention of providing access in the same manner of a traditional block i/o hard disk drive...
s, the X18-M and X25-M with 80GB and 160GB storage capacities. These MLC
Multi-level cell
In electronics, a multi-level cell is a memory element capable of storing more than a single bit of information.MLC NAND flash is a flash memory technology using multiple levels per cell to allow more bits to be stored using the same number of transistors...
-based drives received wide critical acclaim for their superior performance. Intel released their SLC-based Enterprise X25-E Extreme SSDs on October 15 that same year in capacities of 32GB and 64GB.
In July 2009, Intel refreshed their X25-M and X18-M lines by moving from a 50-nanometer to a 34-nanometer process. These new drives, dubbed by the press as the X25-M and X18-M G2 (or generation 2), reduced prices by up to 60 percent while offering lower latency and improved performance.
On February 1, 2010, Intel and Micron
Micron Technology
Micron Technology, Inc. is an American multinational corporation based in Boise, Idaho, USA, best known for producing many forms of semiconductor devices. This includes DRAM, SDRAM, flash memory, SSD and CMOS image sensing chips. Consumers may be more familiar with its consumer brand Crucial...
announced that they were gearing up for production of NAND flash memory using a new 25-nanometer process. In March of that same year, Intel entered the budget SSD segment with their X25-V drives with an initial capacity of 40GB. The SSD 310, Intel's first mSATA drive was released on December 2010, providing X25-M G2 performance in a much smaller package.
March 2011 saw the introduction of two new SSD lines from Intel. The first, the SSD 510, uses a SATA 6 Gigabit per second interface
Serial ATA
Serial ATA is a computer bus interface for connecting host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives and optical drives...
in order to reach speeds of up to 500 MegaBytes per second. The drive, which uses a controller from Marvell, was released using 34 nm NAND Flash and came in capacities of 120GB and 250GB. The second product announcement, the SSD 320, is the successor to Intel's earlier X25-M. It uses the new 25 nm process that Intel and Micron announced in 2010, and was released in capacities of 40 GB, 80 GB, 120 GB, 160 GB, 300 GB and 600 GB. Sequential read performance maxes out at 270 MB/s due to the older SATA 3 Gbit/s interface, and sequential write performance varies greatly based on the size of the drive with sequential write performance of the 40 GB model peaking at 45 MB/s and the 600 GB at 220 MB/s.
Micron and Intel announced that they were producing their first 20 nm MLC NAND flash on April 14, 2011.
| Model | Codename | Capacities (GB) | NAND type | Interface | Form factor | Controller | Seq. read/write MB/s | Rnd 4KB read/write IOPS | Introduced | Comment / Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| X18-M/X25-M | Ephraim | 80/160 | 50 nm MLC | SATA 3 Gbit/s | 1.8"/2.5" | Intel | 250 / 70 | 35,000 / 3,300–350 | Sept 2008 (now EOL) | |
| X25-E | Ephraim | 32/64 | 50 nm SLC | SATA 3 Gbit/s | 2.5" | Intel | 250 / 170 | 35,000 / 3,300 | Oct 2008 | |
| X18-M G2 / X25-M G2 | Postville | 80/160 | 34 nm MLC | SATA 3 Gbit/s | 1.8"/2.5" | Intel | 250 / 100 | 35,000 / 6,600–300 | July 2009 | |
| X25-V | Glenbrook | 40 | 25 nm MLC | SATA 3 Gbit/s | 2.5" | Intel | 170 / 35 | 25,000 / 2,500-? | Mar 2010 | |
| 310 | Soda Creek | 40/80 | 25 nm MLC | mSATA | Mini-PCIe | Intel | Dec 2010 | |||
| 510 | Elmcrest | 120/250 | 34 nm MLC | SATA 6 Gbit/s | 2.5" | Marvell | Mar 2011 | |||
| 320 | Postville Refresh | 40/80/120/160/300/600 | 25 nm MLC | SATA 3 Gbit/s | 2.5" | Intel | Mar 2011 | Originally to be released Oct 2010, named X18-M G3 & X25-M G3, the 1.8" was released later in 2011 | ||
| 311 | Larsen Creek | 20 | 34 nm SLC | SATA 3 Gbit/s | 2.5"/mSATA | Intel | 200/105 | 37,000/3300 | May 2011 | Special low capacity SLC SSD for use with Intel Smart Response Technology Smart Response Technology In computing, Smart Response Technology is a proprietary caching mechanism introduced in 2011 by Intel for their Z68 chipset , which allows a SATA solid-state drive to function as cache for a hard disk drive.SRT is implemented in the device driver and firmware... |
| 710 | Lyndonville | 100/200/300 | 25 nm MLC-HET | SATA 3 Gbit/s | Intel | Possibly July 2011 | ||||
| 720 | Ramsdale | 200/400 | 34 nm SLC | PCIe 2.0x8 | PCIe | 2200/1800 | Possibly Q3, 2011 |
Supercomputers
The Intel Scientific Computers division was founded in 1984 by Justin RattnerJustin Rattner
Justin Rattner is an Intel Senior Fellow, Corporate Vice President and director of Intel Labs. He also serves as the corporation's chief technology officer...
, in order to design and produce parallel computers
Parallel computing
Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently . There are several different forms of parallel computing: bit-level,...
based on Intel microprocessors connected in hypercube
Hypercube
In geometry, a hypercube is an n-dimensional analogue of a square and a cube . It is a closed, compact, convex figure whose 1-skeleton consists of groups of opposite parallel line segments aligned in each of the space's dimensions, perpendicular to each other and of the same length.An...
topologies. In 1992 the name was changed to the Intel Supercomputing Systems Division, and development of the iWarp
IWarp
iWarp was an experimental parallel supercomputer architecture developed as a joint project by Intel and Carnegie Mellon University. The project started in 1988, as a follow-up to CMU's previous WARP research project, in order to explore building an entire parallel-computing "node" in a single...
architecture was also subsumed. The division designed several supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
systems, including the Intel iPSC
Intel iPSC
The Intel iPSC is a parallel computer. It was superseded by the Intel iPSC/2. iPSC also more generally refers to the particular line of Intel parallel computers, which includes the iPSC/2 and the iPSC/860. Acronym "iPSC" means "Intel Personal SuperComputer"....
/1, iPSC/2
Intel iPSC/2
The Intel iPSC/2 is a parallel processor computer produced in 1987. It was the successor of the Intel iPSC and was superseded by the Intel iPSC/860....
, iPSC/860
Intel iPSC/860
The Intel iPSC/860 was a massively parallel supercomputer launched by Intel in 1990. It followed the Intel iPSC/2 and was superseded by the Intel Paragon. The iPSC/860 consisted of up to 128 processing elements connected in a hypercube topology, each element consisting of an Intel i860 or Intel 386...
, Paragon
Intel Paragon
The Intel Paragon was a series of massively parallel supercomputers produced by Intel. The Paragon XP/S was a productized version of the experimental Touchstone Delta system built at Caltech, launched in 1992. The Paragon superseded Intel's earlier iPSC/860 system, to which it was closely...
and ASCI Red
ASCI Red
ASCI Red was the first computer built under the Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative . ASCI Red was built by Intel and installed at Sandia in late 1996. The design was based on the Intel Paragon computer...
.
Competition, antitrust and espionage
Two factors combined to end this dominance: the slowing of PCPersonal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
demand growth beginning in 2000 and the rise of the low cost PC. By the end of the 1990s, microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
performance had outstripped software demand for that CPU power. Aside from high-end server systems and software, demand for which dropped with the end of the "dot-com bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
", consumer systems ran effectively on increasingly low-cost systems after 2000. Intel's strategy of producing ever-more-powerful processors and obsoleting their predecessors stumbled, leaving an opportunity for rapid gains by competitors, notably AMD. This in turn lowered the profitability of the processor line and ended an era of unprecedented dominance of the PC hardware by Intel.
Intel's dominance in the x86 microprocessor market led to numerous charges of antitrust
Antitrust
The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...
violations over the years, including FTC
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act...
investigations in both the late 1980s and in 1999, and civil actions such as the 1997 suit by Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
(DEC) and a patent suit by Intergraph
Intergraph
Intergraph Corporation is an American software development and services company. It provides enterprise engineering and geospatially powered software to businesses, governments, and organizations around the world. Intergraph operates through two divisions: Process, Power & Marine and Security,...
. Intel's market dominance (at one time it controlled over 85% of the market for 32-bit x86 microprocessors) combined with Intel's own hardball legal tactics (such as its infamous 338 patent suit versus PC manufacturers) made it an attractive target for litigation, but few of the lawsuits ever amounted to anything.
A case of industrial espionage
Industrial espionage
Industrial espionage, economic espionage or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security purposes...
arose in 1995 that involved both Intel and AMD. Bill Gaede
Bill Gaede
Bill Gaede is an Argentine engineer, programmer, Cold War industrial spy who worked at Advanced Micro Devices and Intel Corporation . While at AMD, he provided the Cuban Government with technical information from the semiconductor industry which the Cubans passed on to the Soviet bloc, primarily...
, an Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
formerly employed both at AMD and at Intel's Arizona
Chandler, Arizona
-Demographics:As of the Census of 2010, there were 236,123 people, 86,924 households, and 60,212 families residing in the city. The racial makeup of the city was 73.3% White, 4.8% Black or African American, 1.5% Native American, 8.2% Asian, 0.2% Pacific Islander, 21.9% Hispanic or Latino, and 8.3%...
plant, was arrested for attempting in 1993 to sell the i486 and P5
P5 (microarchitecture)
The original Pentium microprocessor was introduced on March 22, 1993. Its microarchitecture, deemed P5, was Intel's fifth-generation and first superscalar x86 microarchitecture. As a direct extension of the 80486 architecture, it included dual integer pipelines, a faster FPU, wider data bus,...
Pentium designs to AMD and to certain foreign powers. Gaede videotaped data from his computer screen at Intel and mailed it to AMD, which immediately alerted Intel and authorities, resulting in Gaede's arrest. Gaede was convicted and sentenced to 33 months in prison in June 1996.
Partnership with Apple
On June 6, 2005, then Apple CEO Steve JobsSteve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
announced that Apple would be transitioning from its long favored PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
architecture to the Intel x86 architecture, because the future PowerPC road map was unable to satisfy Apple's needs. The first Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
computers containing Intel CPUs were announced on January 10, 2006, and Apple had its entire line of consumer Macs running on Intel processors by early August 2006. The Apple Xserve server was updated to Intel Xeon
Xeon
The Xeon is a brand of multiprocessing- or multi-socket-capable x86 microprocessors from Intel Corporation targeted at the non-consumer server, workstation and embedded system markets.-Overview:...
processors from November 2006, and was offered in a configuration similar to Apple's Mac Pro.
Core 2 Duo advertisement controversy
In 2007, the company released a print advertisement for its Core 2Intel Core 2
Core 2 is a brand encompassing a range of Intel's consumer 64-bit x86-64 single-, dual-, and quad-core microprocessors based on the Core microarchitecture. The single- and dual-core models are single-die, whereas the quad-core models comprise two dies, each containing two cores, packaged in a...
Duo processor featuring six African American runners appearing to bow down to a Caucasian male inside of an office setting (due to the posture taken by runners on starting blocks
Starting blocks
Starting blocks are a device used in the sport of Track and Field, known worldwide as Athletics, by sprinters to hold their feet at the start of a race so they don't slip as they push out at the sound of the gun...
). According to Nancy Bhagat, Vice President of Intel Corporate Marketing, the general public found the ad to be "insensitive and insulting." The campaign was quickly pulled and several Intel executives made public apologies on the corporate website.
Classmate PC
Intel's Classmate PCClassmate PC
The Classmate PC, formerly known as Eduwise, is Intel's entry into the market for low-cost personal computers for children in the developing world. It is in some respects similar to the One Laptop Per Child trade association's Children's Machine , which has a similar target market...
is the company's first low-cost netbook
Netbook
Netbooks are a category of small, lightweight, legacy-free, and inexpensive laptop computers.At their inception in late 2007 as smaller notebooks optimized for low weight and low cost — netbooks omitted certain features , featured smaller screens and keyboards, and offered reduced computing...
computer. One of the models, designed by TEAMS Design
TEAMS Design
TEAMS Design is a multinational industrial design firm headquartered in Germany founded in 1956 by industrial designer Hans Erich Slany. As of July, 2009, TEAMS has five design studios on three continents. They have been ranked second by the International Forum Design , or 14th in an international...
http://www.teamsdesign.com/com/ in their Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
office, won many design awards such as the Appliance Design EID Award, 2008 Spark Award and iF
International Forum Design
iF International Forum Design GmbH is a Hanover-based organization providing design-related services. International Forum Design was launched in 2001 as the operative business arm of design promotion company iF Industrie Forum Design Hannover e.V....
2008 China Award.
Mobile processor
In June 2011, Intel introduced the first Pentium mobile processor based on Sandy Bridge core. The B940, clocked at 2 GHz, is faster than existing or upcoming mobile Celerons, although it is almost identical to dual-core Celeron CPUs in all other aspects. According to IHS iSuppli's report on September 28, 2011, Sandy Bridge chips have helped Intel increase its market share in global processor market to 81.8%, while AMD's market share dropped to 10.4%.Intel planned to introduce Medfield – a processor for tablets and smartphones – to the market in 2012, as an effort to compete with ARM. As a 32-nanometer processor, Medfield is designed to be energy-efficient, which is one of the core features in ARM’s chips. Agam Shah, IDG News. "Intel's New Smartphone Chip Is Key ARM Battle." Jun 7, 2011. Retrieved Jul 8, 2011.
At the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) 2011 in San Francisco, Intel's partnership with Google was announced. By January 2012, Google's Android 2.3 will use Intel's Atom microprocessor.