Intel™INTELis the world's largest company and the inventor of the series of microprocessors, the processors found in manyFounded in 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation and based in , Intel also makes chipsets, and ICs, , graphic chips, embedded processors, and other devices related to communications and computing. Founded by semiconductor pioneers and, Intel combines advanced chip design capability with a leading-edge manufacturing capability. Originally known primarily to engineers and technologists, Intel's successful "Intel Inside" advertising campaign of the 1990s made it and its processor household names.Intel was an early developer of and memory chips, and this represented the majority of its business until the early 1980s. While Intel created the first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, it was not until the creation of the (PC) that this became their primary business. During the 1990s, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs and in fostering the rapid growth of the PC industry. During this period Intel became the de facto monopoly supplier of microprocessors for PCs, and was known for aggressive tactics in defense of its market position, as well as a struggle with for control over the direction of the PC industry.By the early 2000s, Microsoft had passed Intel in power in the PC industry, and competitors had emerged in the advanced microprocessor market. Intel's November 2006 stock market capitalization was less than one-quarter of its 2000 high, and only 40% of Microsoft's.HISTORYIntel was founded in 1968 by (a physicist and co-inventor of the ) when they left. A number of other Fairchild employees also went on to participate in other Silicon Valley companies. Intel's fourth employee was ), who ran the company through much of the 1980s and the high-growth 1990s. Grove is now remembered as the company's key business and strategic leader. By the end of the 1990s, Intel was one of the largest and most successful businesses in the world, though fierce competition within the semiconductor industry has since diminished its position.Intel has grown through several distinct phases. At its founding, Intel was distinguished simply by its ability to make semiconductors, and its primary product were (SRAM) chips. 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 in 1971, by the early 1980s its business was dominated by chips. However, increased competition from semiconductor manufacturers had by 1983 dramatically reduced the profitability of this market, and the sudden success of the convinced then-CEO 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, and Intel embarked on a 10-year period of unprecedented growth as the primary (and most profitable) hardware supplier to the PC industry. After 2000, growth in demand for high-end microprocessors slowed and competitors garnered significant market share, initially in low-end and mid-range processors but ultimately across the product range, and Intel's dominant position was 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. 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 10,000 new employees. In September of 2006 due to falling profits, the company announced a restructuring that resulted in a workforce reduction of 10,500 employees or about 10 percent of its workforce by July of 2006. Its research lab located at Cambridge University was closed at the end of 2006.In September 2006, Intel had nearly 100,000 employees and 200 facilities world wide. Its 2005 revenues were $38.8 billion and its ranking was 49th. Its stock symbol is INTC, listed on the Intel, x86 processors, and the IBM PCDespite the ultimate importance of the microprocessor, the and its successors the and the were never major revenue contributors at Intel. As the next processor, the (and its variant the 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 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 microprocessor, though IBM chose not to use that, embarking on an effort to produce its own x86 processor under a cross-licensing agreement with Intel., the first IBM PC "clone" manufacturer, in 1985 produced a desktop system based on the faster processor and in 1986 quickly followed with the first based system, beating IBM and establishing a competitive market for PC-compatible systems and setting up Intel as a key component supplier486, Pentium, and Itanium:Intel introduced themicroprocessor 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 introduced in 1993 as the Intel , substituting a trademarked name for the former part number (numbers, like 486, cannot be trademarked). The P6 followed in 1995 as the and improved into thein 1997. New architectures were developed alternately in. Later, some chip variants were developed in Intel's 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 engineers, though Intel soon took over primary design responsibility. The resulting implementation of the 64-bit architecture was the , introduced in June 2001. The Itanium's performance running legacy x86 code did not achieve expectations, and it initially failed to effectively compete with 64-bit extensions to the original x86 architecture, first from AMD (thethen from Intel itself (the , formerly known as EM64T). Intel continues to develop and deploy the Itanium and the IA-64 architecture as the During this period Intel's Hillsboro team designed and introduced the * in 1995, the processor (code-named P67 and P68) and marketed as Pentium 4, and finally the 64-bit extensions to the x86 architecture, present in some versions of the Pentium 4 and in the chips.Intel was founded in 1968 by (a physicist and co-inventor of the . A number of other Fairchild employees also went on to participate in other Silicon Valley companies. Intel's fourth employee was ), who ran the company through much of the 1980s and the high-growth 1990s. Grove is now remembered as the company's key business and strategic leader. By the end of the 1990s, Intel was one of the largest and most successful businesses in the world, though fierce competition within the semiconductor industry has since diminished its position.[ Origin of the nameAt its founding, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce wanted to name their new company "Moore Noyce". This name, however, sounded remarkably similar to "more noise" — an ill-suited name for an company, since noise is typically associated with bad They then used the name NM Electronics for almost a year, before deciding to call their company INTegrated ELectronics or "Intel" for short. However, Intel was already trademarked by a chain, so they had to buy the rights for that name at the beginning]The nickname Chipzilla was coined by journalist and industry analyst , where it was picked up and amplified by and The Inquirer.[] Company's evolutionIntel has grown through several distinct phases. At its founding, Intel was distinguished simply by its ability to make semiconductors, and its primary product were (SRAM) chips. 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 in 1971 and one of the first by the early 1980s its business was dominated by chips. However, increased competition from manufacturers had by 1983 dramatically reduced the profitability of this market, and the sudden success of the convinced then-CEO 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, and Intel embarked on a 10-year period of unprecedented growth as the primary (and most profitable) hardware supplier to the PC industry. After 2000, growth in demand for high-end microprocessors slowed and competitors garnered significant market share, initially in low-end and mid-range processors but ultimately across the product range, and Intel's dominant position was 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. 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 of 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 of 2006. Its research lab located at Cambridge University was closed at the end of 2006SRAMS and the microprocessorThe company's first products memory and random-access integrated circuits, and Intel grew to be a leader in the fiercely competitive markets throughout the 1970s. Concurrently, Intel engineers , invented the first . Originally developed for the Japanese companyreplace a number of in a calculator already produced by Busicom, the was introduced to the mass market on , though the microprocessor did not become the core of Intel's business until the mid-1980s. (Note: Intel is usually given credit with for the almost-simultaneous invention of the microprocessor.)
] From DRAM to microprocessorsIn 1983, at the dawn of the era, Intel's profits came under increased pressure from memory-chip manufacturers, and then-President Andy Grove drove the company into a focus on microprocessors. Grove described this transition in the book A key element of his plan was the notion, then considered radical, of becoming the single source for successors to the 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 . When the PC industry exploded in the late 1980s and 1990s, Intel was one of the primary beneficiaries.
Intel, x86 processors, and the IBM PCDespite the ultimate importance of the microprocessor, the and its successors the were never major revenue contributors at Intel. As the next processor, the ) 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-createddivision, 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 microprocessor, which, two years later, were used in the IBM PC/AT. the first IBM PC "clone" manufacturer, in 1985 produced a desktop system based on the faster processor and in 1986 quickly followed with the first -based system, beating IBM and establishing a competitive market for PC-compatible systems and setting up Intel as a key component supplier.
[] 386 microprocessorDuring this period Andy Grove dramatically redirected the company, closing much of its business and directing resources to the microprocessor business. Of perhaps more 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 would use to ensure a consistent supply. The 8080 and 8086-series microprocessor were produced by several companies, notably Grove made the decision not to license the 386 design to other manufacturers, instead producing it in three geographically-distinct factories in Santa Clara (CA), Hillsboro (OR), and Phoenix (AZ), 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.
Intel Pentium 4 Processor
[486, Pentium, and ItaniumIntel introduced 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 introduced in 1993 as the Intel substituting a trademarked name for the former part number (numbers, like 486, cannot be trademarked). The P6 followed in 1995 as in 1997. New architectures were developed alternately in and Later, many chip variants were developed in Intel's 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 engineers, though Intel soon took over primary design responsibility. The resulting implementation of the 64-bit architecture was the , introduced in June 2001. The Itanium's performance running legacy x86 code did not achieve expectations, and it initially failed to effectively compete with 64-bit extensions to the original x86 architecture, first from AMD (the ), then from Intel itself (, formerly known as EM64T). Intel continues to develop and deploy the Itanium and the IA-64 architecture as the .During this period Intel's Hillsboro team designed and introduced the * processor (code-named P67 and P68) and marketed as Pentium 4, and finally the 64-bit extensions to the x86 architecture, present in some versions of the Pentium 4 and in the Pentium flawMain June 1994, Intel engineers discovered a flaw in the floating-point math subsection of the 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 decided to correct the error in a future chip revision, but nonetheless declined to disclose it.[In October 1994, Dr. Thomas Nicely, Professor of Mathematics at independently discovered the bug, and upon receiving no response from his inquiry to Intel, on October 30 posted a message on the InternetWord 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 spotlighting the error. Intel changed their position and decided to offer 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.Paradoxically, 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 up tick in the "Intel Inside" campaign, the episode is considered by some 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 (for most users) a lasting negative impression.[Inside, Intel Systems Division, and Intel Architecture LabsDuring this period, Intel undertook two major supporting programs that helped guarantee their processor's success. The first is widely-known: the 1990 " marketing and branding campaign. 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 "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. By manufacturing leading-edge PC motherboards systems, Intel enabled smaller manufacturers to compete with larger manufacturers, accelerating the adoption of the newest microprocessors and system architecture, including theother innovations. This led to more rapid adoption of each of its new processors in turn.[combined to end this dominance: the slowing of PC 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 "", 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 thmarket led to numerous charges of violations over the years, including in both the late 1980s and in 1999, and civil actions such as the 1997 suit (DEC) and a patent suit by Intel's market dominance (at one time it controlled over 85% of the market for 32-bit PC microprocessors) combined with Intel's own hardball legal tactics (such as its infamoussuit versus PC manufacturers) made it an attractive target for litigation, but few of the lawsuits ever amounted to anything.A case of arose in 1995 that involved both Intel and AMD. months in prison in June of 1996with AppleFor more details on this topic, see Jobs confirms the rumors of the transition at the 2005 WWDC. The lowered "e" is a humorous reference to Intel's former logo.On announced that Apple would be transitioning from its long favored , because the future PowerPC road map was unable to satisfy Apple's needs. The first Apple computers containing Intel CPUs were announced on Apple initially planned to put Intel chips in all of their computers by the end and later announced that it would be complete by the end of 2006Apple managed to have its entire consumer product line running on Intel processors by early August 2006. The Apple Xserve server was updated to Intel processors from November 2006 and is offered in a configuration similar to Apple's Mac Proof XScale processor businessOn June 27, 2006, the sale of Intel's assets was announced. Intel agreed to sell the XScale processor business toits resources on its core x86 and server businesses. The acquisition was completed on November 9, 2006.European Commission anti-competitive allegationsIn 2007, the of anti-competitive practices, mostly against its main The allegations, going back till 2003, include giving preferential prices to computer makers getting most or all CPU chips from Intel, paying computer makers to delay or cancel the launch of products using AMD chips and providing CPU chips at below cost to governments and educational ntel responded that the allegations were unfounded and instead qualified its market behavior as consumer-friendly. General counsel Bruce Sewell also responded that the Commission had misunderstood some factual assumptions concerning price and manufacturing costs.[If found guilty of stifling competition, Intel could be fined upto 10% of its annual revenue.Rival AMD also subsequently launched a website focusing on these allegations Core Duo advertisement controversyIn 2007, the company released a print advertisement for its Core Duo processor featuring six African American runners appearing to bow down to a Caucasian male inside of an office setting. 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] Corporate affairsIn September 2006, Intel had nearly 100,000 employees and 200 facilities world wide. Its 2005 revenues heavily from within, most notably in its executive suite. The company has resisted the trend toward outsider CEOs. Paul Otellini was a 30-year veteran of the company when he assumed the role of CEO. All of his top lieutenants have risen through the ranks after many years with the firm. In many cases, Intel's top executives have spent their entire working careers with Intel, a very rare occurrence in volatile Silicon Valley.Intel has a mandatory retirement policy for its CEO when they reach age 65, but only one CEO, Barrett, has actually retired at 65. Previous CEOs all retired before reaching that age; Grove retired at 62, while both Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore retired at 58. At 57, Otellini has a long career at the helm ahead of him, assuming he goes until age 65 and performs satisfactorily.No one has an office; everyone, even Otellini, sits in. This is designed to promote has a similar no-office policy Like many companies with employee diversity groups, they include groups based on race and nationality as well as sexual identity and religion. In 1994, Intel sanctioned one of the earliest corporate Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender employee groupsa Muslim employees groupin 2002. It has maintained this rating in 2003 and 2004. In addition, the company was named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2005 by However, Intel's working practices still face criticism, most notably from Ken Hamidia former employee who has been subject to multiple unsuccessful lawsuits from Intel.
