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Intel Corporation

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Intel Corporation
2200 Mission College Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054-1549
CA Tel. 408-765-8080
Toll Free 800-628-8686
Fax 408-765-3804

Type: Public
On the web: http://www.intel.com
Employees: 86,300
Employee growth: (8.3%)

Intel -- still #1 in semiconductors, and no longer complacent about holding the top spot. The company holds the lion's share in the market for microprocessors that go into desktop and notebook computers, and also into computer servers. Archrival AMD has eaten into Intel's market share in recent years, but the big guy has fought back with faster processors and advanced manufacturing technology. Intel also makes embedded semiconductors for the industrial equipment and networking gear markets. Most computer makers use Intel processors; PC giants Dell (18% of sales) and Hewlett-Packard (17%) are the company's largest customers. The Asia/Pacific region generates more than half of Intel's revenues.

Key numbers for fiscal year ending December, 2007:
Sales: $38,334.0M
One year growth: 8.3%
Net income: $6,976.0M
Income growth: 38.3%

Officers:
Chairman: Craig R. Barrett
President, CEO, and Director: Paul S. Otellini
EVP; General Manager, Sales and Marketing Group, and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer: Sean M. Maloney

Competitors:
AMD
Samsung Electronics
Texas Instruments

 
 
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(Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA, www.intel.com.) The largest semiconductor manufacturing company. It is also a leading vendor in computer, networking and communications products. Intel's hardware and Microsoft's software pioneered the PC and revolutionized the computer industry. Intel's x86 family of CPUs is the most widely used in desktop PCs, laptops and servers.

Intel was founded in 1968 by Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove in Mountain View, CA. A year later it introduced its first product, a 64-bit bipolar static RAM chip. By 1971, its very successful memory chips began to render magnetic core storage obsolete.

In that same year, Intel developed the microprocessor. In response to a calculator chip order from Japanese manufacturer Busicom, Intel engineer Marcian E. "Ted" Hoff decided it would make more sense to design a general-purpose machine. The resulting 4004 chip was the world's first microprocessor (see 4004).

Although known for its x86 family of chips, over the years, Intel has developed a wide variety of chips and board-level products, including the MULTIBUS bus used in industrial applications. Intel started with 12 people, and first year revenues were less than $3,000 dollars. In 2006, the company had 100,000 employees and revenues of $35 billion. See x86, Itanium, IA-64 and Tera-Scale.

Intel Founders
The founders of Intel posing with a rubylith of the 8080 CPU in 1978. From left to right: Andy Grove, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore.

Inside the Plant
These pictures were taken inside Intel's semiconductor fabrication plants. Chip making is performed in clean rooms, where the air is exchanged seven times each minute and the workers wear "bunny suits" to keep themselves from contaminating the process.



 
Company History: Intel Corporation

Incorporated: 1968 as N M Electronics
NAIC: 334413 Semiconductor and Related Device Manufacturing; 334210 Telephone Apparatus Manufacturing

Intel Corporation is the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world, with 11 fabrication facilities and six assembly and test facilities around the world. Intel has changed the global marketplace dramatically since it was founded in 1968; the company invented the microprocessor, the "computer on a chip" that made possible the first handheld calculators and personal computers (PCs). By the early 21st century, Intel's microprocessors were found in approximately 80 percent of PCs worldwide. The company's product line also includes chipsets and motherboards; flash memory used in wireless communications and other applications; networking devices and equipment for accessing the Internet, local area networks, and home networks; and embedded control microchips used in networking products, laser printers, factory automation instruments, cellular phone base stations, and other applications. Intel has remained competitive through a combination of clever marketing, well-supported research and development, superior manufacturing proficiency, a vital corporate culture, prowess in legal matters, and an ongoing alliance with software giant Microsoft Corporation often referred to as "Wintel."

Intel's founders, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, were among the eight founders of Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, established in 1957. While at Fairchild, Noyce and Moore invented the integrated circuit; in 1968, they decided to form their own company. They were soon joined by Andrew Grove, a Hungarian refugee who had arrived in the United States in 1956 and joined Fairchild in 1963. Grove would remain president and CEO of Intel into the 1990s.

To obtain start-up capital, Noyce and Moore approached Arthur Rock, a venture capitalist, with a one-page business plan simply stating their intention of developing large-scale integrated circuits. Rock, who had helped start Fairchild Semiconductor, as well as Teledyne and Scientific Data Systems, had confidence in Noyce and Moore and provided $3 million in capital. The company was incorporated on July 18, 1968, as N M Electronics (the letters standing for Noyce Moore), but quickly changed its name to Intel, formed from the first syllables of "integrated electronics." Intel gathered another $2 million in capital before going public in 1971.

Noyce and Moore's scanty business proposal belied a clear plan to produce large-scale integrated (LSI) semiconductor memories. At that time, semiconductor memories were ten times more expensive than standard magnetic core memories. Costs were falling, however, and Intel's founders surmised that with the greater speed and efficiency of LSI technology, semiconductors would soon replace magnetic cores. Within a few months of its startup, Intel produced the 3101 Schottky bipolar memory, a high-speed random access memory (RAM) chip. The 3101 proved popular enough to sustain the company until the 1101, a metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) chip, was perfected and introduced in 1969. The following year, Intel introduced the 1103, a 1-kilobyte (K) dynamic RAM, or DRAM, which was the first chip large enough to store a significant amount of information. With the 1103, Intel finally had a chip that really did begin to replace magnetic cores; DRAMs eventually proved indispensable to the personal computer.

The company's most dramatic impact on the computer industry involved its 1971 introduction of the 4004, the world's first microprocessor. Like many of Intel's innovations, the microprocessor was a byproduct of efforts to develop another technology. When a Japanese calculator manufacturer, Busicom, asked Intel to design cost-effective chips for a series of calculators, Intel engineer Ted Hoff was assigned to the project; during his search for such a design, Hoff conceived a plan for a central processing unit (CPU) on one chip. The 4004, which crammed 2,300 transistors onto a one-eighth- by one-sixth-inch chip, had the power of the old 3,000-cubic-foot ENIAC computer, which depended on 38,000 vacuum tubes.

Although Intel initially focused on the microprocessor as a computer enhancement that would allow users to add more memory to their units, the microprocessor's great potential--for everything from calculators to cash registers and traffic lights--soon became clear. The applications were facilitated by Intel's introduction of the 8008, an 8-bit microprocessor developed along with the 4004 but oriented toward data and character (rather than arithmetic) manipulation. The 8080, introduced in 1974, was the first truly general purpose microprocessor. For $360, Intel sold a whole computer on one chip, while conventional computers sold for thousands of dollars. The response was overwhelming. The 8080 soon became the industry standard and Intel the industry leader in the 8-bit market.

In response to ensuing competition in the manufacture of 8-bit microprocessors, Intel introduced the 8085, a faster chip with more functions. The company was also developing two more advanced projects, the 32-bit 432 and the 16-bit 8086. The 8086 was introduced in 1978 but took two years to achieve wide use, and, during this time, Motorola, Inc. produced a competing chip (the 68000) that seemed to be selling faster. Intel responded with a massive sales effort to establish its architecture as the standard. When International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) chose the 8008, the 8086's 8-bit cousin, for its personal computer in 1980, Intel seemed to have beat out the competition.

During the 1970s, Intel had also developed the erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), another revolutionary but unintended research byproduct. Intel physicist Dov Frohman was working on the reliability problems of the silicon gate used in the MOS process when he realized that the disconnected, or "floating," gates that were causing malfunctions could be used to create a chip that was erasable and reprogrammable. Since conventional ROM chips had to be permanently programmed during manufacture, any change required the manufacture of a whole new chip. With EPROM, however, Intel could offer customers chips that could be erased and reprogrammed with ultraviolet light and electricity. At its introduction in 1971, EPROM was a novelty without much of a market. But the microprocessor, invented at the same time, created a demand for memory; the EPROM offered memory that could be conveniently used to test microprocessors.

Another major development at Intel during this time was that of peripheral controller chips. Streamlined for specific tasks and stripped of unneeded functions, peripheral chips could greatly increase a computer's abilities without raising software development costs. One of Intel's most important developments in peripherals was the coprocessor, first introduced in 1980. Coprocessor chips were an extension of the CPU that could handle specific computer-intensive tasks more efficiently than the CPU itself. Once again, innovation kept Intel ahead of its competition.

Intel's rapid growth, from the 12 employees at its founding in 1968 to 15,000 in 1980, demanded a careful approach to corporate culture. Noyce, Moore, and Grove, who remembered their frustration with Fairchild's bureaucratic bottlenecks, found that defining a workable management style was important. Informal weekly lunches with employees kept communication lines open while the company was small, but that system had become unwieldy. Thus, the founders installed a carefully outlined program emphasizing openness, decision-making on the lowest levels, discipline, and problem solving rather than paper shuffling. Moreover, the company's top executives eschewed such luxuries as limousines, expense account lunches, and private parking spaces to establish a sense of teamwork with their subordinates.

In an interview with the Harvard Business Review in 1980, Noyce remarked on the company's hiring policy, stating, "we expect people to work hard. We expect them to be here when they are committed to be here; we measure absolutely everything that we can in terms of performance." Employee incentives included options on Intel stock, and technological breakthroughs were celebrated with custom-bottled champagne--"Vintage Intel" marked the first $250 million quarter, in 1983--the year sales reached $1 billion for the first time.

During the 1974 recession, Intel was forced to lay off 30 percent of its employees, and morale declined substantially as a result. Thus, in 1981, when economic struggles again surfaced, instead of laying off more employees, Intel accelerated new product development with the "125 Percent Solution," which asked exempt employees to work two extra hours per day, without pay, for six months. A brief surge in sales the following year did not last, and, again, instead of more layoffs, Intel imposed pay cuts of up to 10 percent. Such measures were not popular among all its workforce, but, by June 1983, all cuts had been restored and retroactive raises had been made. Moreover, in December 1982, IBM paid $250 million for a 12 percent share of Intel, giving the company not only a strong capital boost, but also strong ties to the undisputed industry leader. IBM would eventually increase its stake to 20 percent before selling its Intel stock in 1987.

During the early 1980s, Intel began to slip in some of its markets. Fierce competition in DRAMs, static RAMs, and EPROMs left Intel concentrating on microprocessors. While competitors claimed that Intel simply gave away its DRAM market, Moore told Business Week in 1988 that the company deliberately focused on microprocessors as the least cyclical field in which to operate. Customer service, an area Intel had been able to overlook for years as it dominated its markets, became more important as highly efficient Japanese and other increasingly innovative competitors challenged Intel's position. In addition, Intel's manufacturing record, strained in years past by undercapacity, needed fixing. Fab 7, Intel's seventh wafer-fabrication plant, opened in 1983 only to face two years of troubled operations before reaching full capacity. Between 1984 and 1988, Intel closed eight old plants, and in 1988 it spent some $450 million on new technology to bring its manufacturing capacity into line with its developmental prowess.

Despite these retrenchments, the company continued to excel in the microprocessor market. In 1982 Intel introduced its 80286 microprocessor, the chip that quickly came to dominate the upper-end PC market, when IBM came out with the 286-powered PC/AT. The 286 was followed in 1985 by Intel's 80386 chip, popularized in 1987 by the Compaq DESKPRO 386, and which, despite bugs when it first came out, became one of the most popular chips on the market. While the 286 brought to the personal computer a speed and power that gave larger computers their first real challenge, the 386 offered even greater speed and power together with the ability to run more than one program at a time. The 386 featured 32-bit architecture and 275,000 transistors, more than twice the number of the 286.

In 1989 Intel introduced the 80486, a chip Business Week heralded as "a veritable mainframe-on-a-chip." The 486 included 1.2 million transistors and the first built-in math coprocessor, and was 50 times faster than the 4004, the first microprocessor. In designing the i486, Intel resisted an industry trend toward RISC (reduced instruction-set computing), a chip design that eliminated rarely used instructions in order to gain speed. Intel argued that what RISC chips gained in speed they lost in flexibility and that, moreover, RISC chips were not compatible with software already on the market, which Intel felt would secure the 486's position. A new chip, the 64-bit i860 announced in early 1989, however, did make use of RISC technology to offer what Intel claimed would be a "supercomputer on a chip."

Also in 1989, a major lawsuit that Intel had filed against NEC Corporation five years before was decided. Intel had claimed that NEC violated its copyright on the microcode, or embedded software instructions, of Intel's 8086 and 8088 chips. Although Intel had licensed NEC to produce the microcode, NEC had subsequently designed a similar chip of its own. At issue was whether microcode could be copyrighted. The court ruled that it could but that NEC had not violated any copyright in the case at hand. The suit made public some issues surrounding Intel's reputation. Some rivals and consumers, for example, claimed that Intel used its size and power to repress competition through such tactics as filing "meritless" lawsuits and tying microprocessor sales to other chips. Other observers, however, praised Intel's protection of its intellectual property and, subsequently, its profits. The Federal Trade Commission conducted a two-year investigation of Intel's practices and did not recommend criminal charges against the company, but two rival companies, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) and Cyrix Corporation, filed antitrust lawsuits against Intel in 1993.

Intel's annual net income topped $1 billion for the first time in 1992, following a very successful, brand-building marketing campaign. Intel ads aggressively sought to bolster consumer interest in and demand for computers that featured "Intel Inside." By late 1993, the company's brand equity totaled $17.8 billion, more than three times its 1992 sales. Also during this time, Intel began to branch out from chipmaking. In 1992 the company's Intel Products Group introduced network, communications, and personal conferencing products for retail sale directly to PC users.

In 1993 Intel released its fifth-generation Pentium processor, a trademarked chip capable of executing over 100 million instructions per second (MIPS) and supporting, for example, real-time video communication. The Pentium processor, with its 3.1 million transistors, was up to five times more powerful than the 33-megahertz Intel 486 DX microprocessor (and 1,500 times the speed of the 4004), but, in an unusual marketing maneuver, the company suggested that "all but the most demanding users" would seek out PCs powered by the previous chip. The Pentium's reputation was initially sullied by the revelation of an embedded mathematical flaw, but Intel moved quickly to fix the problem.

The company enjoyed a dramatic 50 percent revenue increase in 1993, reaching $8.78 billion from $5.84 billion in 1992. Moreover, Intel's net income leapt 115 percent to $2.3 billion, repudiating Wall Street's worries that competition had squeezed profit margins. While Intel faced strong competition both from chip makers such as Motorola's PowerPC and former partner IBM, its place at the leading edge of technology was undisputed.

A key initiative that kept Intel ahead of its competitors was the company's move beyond chip design into computer design. With the advent of the Pentium, Intel began designing chipsets and motherboards, the latter being the PC circuit board that combined a microprocessor and a chipset into the basic subsystem of a PC. With the company now selling the guts of a PC, dozens of computer manufacturers began making and selling Pentium-based machines.

In the mid-1990s, as sales of PCs accelerated and multimedia and the Internet were beginning to emerge, Intel continued developing ever more powerful microprocessors. In 1995 the Pentium Pro hit the market sporting 5.5 million transistors and capable of performing up to 300 MIPS. Intel next added MMX technology to its existing line of Pentium processors. MMX consisted of a new set of instructions that was designed specifically to improve the multimedia performance of personal computers. Fueled by exploding demand, revenues hit $20.85 billion by 1996, while net income soared to $5.16 billion.

At this point Intel was continuing its longtime strategy of designing new, more powerful chips for the top end of the market while allowing previous-generation microprocessors to migrate down to the lower segments of the market. With the introduction of the Pentium II in May 1997, however, the company adopted a new strategy of developing a range of microprocessors for every segment of the computing market. The Pentium II, with 7.5 transistors, debuted with a top-end model that clocked at 300 megahertz. Originally designed for high-end desktop PCs, the Pentium II was soon adapted for use in notebook and laptop computers. With the following year came the launch of the Celeron processor, which was designed specifically for the value PC desktop sector, a rapidly growing segment of the market ever since the early 1997 debut of a sub-$1,000 PC from Compaq. Also in 1998 Intel for the first time designed a microprocessor, the Pentium II Xeon, especially for midrange and higher-end servers and workstations. At the same time Intel was moving into another burgeoning sector, that of embedded control chips for networking and other applications, such as digital set-top boxes.

Meanwhile Intel settled a dispute with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) over the development of the Pentium chip by acquiring DEC's semiconductor operations. In May 1997 Craig R. Barrett was named president of Intel, having joined the company in 1974, serving as head of manufacturing starting in 1985, and being named chief operating officer in 1993. Grove remained chairman and CEO for one year, whereupon Barrett was named president and CEO, with Grove retaining the chairmanship. In early 1999 Intel reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission on an antitrust suit, thereby avoiding the protracted litigation and negative publicity that beset its Wintel partner, Microsoft, in the late 1990s. Reflecting the increasing importance of technology to the U.S. economy, Intel was added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average in November 1999.

During the late 1990s Intel made several strategic acquisitions that rapidly gave the company a significant presence in areas outside its microprocessor core: wireless communications products, such as flash memory for mobile phones and two-way pagers; networking building blocks, such as hubs, switches, and routers; and embedded control chips for laser printers, storage media, and automotive systems. Intel also entered the market for e-commerce services, rapidly building up the largest business-to-business e-commerce site in the world, with $1 billion per month in online sales by mid-1999. The company was not neglecting its core, however; in 1999 Intel had its largest microprocessor launch ever with the simultaneous introduction of 15 Pentium III and Pentium III Xeon processors.

The new product launches continued in 2000, but they were accompanied by an uncharacteristic series of blunders. In February arch-rival AMD had bested Intel by releasing the first 1-gigahertz chip, the Athlon, which had the added benefit of being cheaper than the Pentium III. Intel responded by speeding a 1.13-gigahertz version of the Pentium III to market, but the processor simply did not work right and thousands had to be recalled. Further embarrassment came when the firm had to recall a million motherboards because of a faulty chip. Intel had also underestimated growth in PC sales, leaving its production capacity insufficient to meet the demands of computer makers, and it also cancelled plans to develop a low-end microprocessor called Timna that had been slated for budget PCs. Intel continued to encounter problems developing the complex Itanium 64-bit processor, the company's first, which was specifically designed, in partnership with Hewlett-Packard Company, to meet the needs of powerful Internet servers. The long-delayed Itanium, seven years in the making at a cost of $2 billion, finally reached the market in 2001, receiving a rather muted initial reception. (The Itanium line was later shifted from servers to high-end computers.) On the bright side, Intel successfully released the Pentium 4 in November 2000. This processor included 42 million transistors and ran at an initial speed of 1.5 gigahertz, enabling Intel to regain the lead in the ongoing chip-speed battle with AMD. Despite all of the year's travails, Intel reached new heights in financial performance, earning $10.54 billion in profits on revenues of $33.73 billion.

The bursting of the Internet bubble posed new challenges for Intel in 2001 as consumer spending on computers dropped off and corporate information technology managers pulled back as well. The fierce competition from AMD prompted Intel to initiate a brutal price war, which cut both revenues and profits, and it also slashed Intel's worldwide share of the microprocessor market to below 80 percent, compared to the 86.7 percent figure from 1998. In 2001 Barrett began jettisoning many of the new ventures and acquisitions that were part of the late 1990s diversification drive, in a renewed refocusing on microprocessors. Revenues for 2001 fell 21 percent to $26.54 billion--the first such drop since the mid-1980s tech recession--while profits plummeted 87 percent to $1.29 billion. Early the following year, Paul Otellini was named president and chief operating officer, with Barrett remaining CEO. Otellini had served in a variety of marketing and management positions since joining the company in 1974, most recently serving as head of Intel's core operating unit, the architecture group, which was responsible for developing microprocessors, chipsets, and motherboards for desktop and notebook computers and for servers.

As the technology downturn continued in 2002, Intel cut thousands of workers from its payroll to reduce costs. Behind the scenes, an important change occurred in the company's approach to designing chips. Since the 1980s Intel had maintained its leading position by creating ever-faster processors. But by the early 2000s speed was becoming less important to the majority of PC users, who were mainly employing their desktop PCs and laptops to surf the Internet and run basic programs, such as word processors. Intel decided to deemphasize speed in favor of designing chips to better fit the way people were actually using their computers and to do so using technology "platforms," which were composed of several chips rather than a single microprocessor. The first fruit of this endeavor was Centrino, launched in early 2003. Centrino was a combination of chips specifically designed for portable computers. It included the Pentium M microprocessor, which while not sporting top speeds consumed much less power than the typical chip, providing for longer battery life (and reduced energy consumption when installed in desktop computers). The Pentium M was also smaller in size, making it less expensive to manufacture. Centrino also included a supporting chipset to further improve battery life and graphics performance as well as a wireless radio chip for connecting to the burgeoning number of wireless (Wi-Fi) networks being installed at corporate offices, in retail outlets, and within homes.

Buoyed by the success of Centrino, Intel's revenues hit a new high in 2004, $34.21 billion, despite a number of manufacturing glitches, product delays, and schedule changes during the year. Intel abandoned its efforts to develop television display chips and also scrapped plans to introduce the first 4-gigahertz processor because of problems with overheating. The profits of $7.52 billion were an impressive 33 percent higher than the previous year but below the peak reached in 2000.

In May 2005 Otellini became only the fifth CEO in Intel history and the first non-engineer. At the same time, Barrett succeeded Grove as chairman. One of the key legacies of Barrett's tenure was surely the huge outlay of capital, as much as $32 billion over six years, expended to rebuild Intel's manufacturing base and enabling the firm to increase capacity to meet chip demand and add capabilities to the products. At the same time, Otellini was credited with leading the push toward platforms, and this approach was institutionalized in a 2005 reorganization that divided the company into five market-focused groups: corporate computing, the digital home, mobile computing, healthcare, and channels (PCs for small manufacturers). Otellini was also shifting the product development effort toward so-called dual-core technology featuring two computing engines on a single piece of silicon. In this realm, Intel was competing fiercely with, and playing catchup to, AMD, which released its first dual-core chips for PCs in 2005, whereas Intel was aiming to produce three lines of dual-core processors, for notebooks, desktops, and servers, during the second half of 2006. Like the Centrino technology, dual-core chips were being developed to extend battery life in laptops and cut power costs for desktop PCs and servers. They were also intended to improve performance while avoiding the problems with overheating that had plagued some of the fastest single-processor models. Intel was simultaneously beginning work on multicore platforms with three or more "brains." Two other developments from mid-2005 held potential long-term significance. AMD filed a wide-ranging antitrust suit in U.S. federal court accusing Intel of using illegal inducements and coercion to discourage computer makers from buying AMD's computer chips. This action followed an antitrust ruling against Intel in Japan, earlier in the year. In the meantime, in what seemed a significant coup, Intel reached an agreement with Apple Computer, Inc. whereby Apple would begin shifting its Macintosh computers from IBM's PowerPC chips to Intel chips.

Principal Subsidiaries

Components Intel de Costa Rica, S.A.; Intel Americas, Inc.; Intel Asia Finance Ltd. (Cayman Islands); Intel Capital Corporation (Cayman Islands); Intel Copenhagen ApS (Denmark); Intel Corporation (UK) Ltd.; Intel Electronics Finance Limited (Cayman Islands); Intel Electronics Ltd. (Israel); Intel Europe, Inc.; Intel International; Intel International B.V. (Netherlands); Intel Ireland Limited (Cayman Islands); Intel Israel (74) Limited; Intel Kabushiki Kaisha (Japan); Intel Malaysia Sdn. Berhad; Intel Massachusetts, Inc.; Intel Overseas G.C. Ltd. (Cayman Islands); Intel Overseas Funding Corporation (Cayman Islands); Intel Phils. Holding Corporation; Intel Products (M) Sdn. Bhd. (Malaysia); Intel Puerto Rico, Ltd. (Cayman Islands); Intel Semiconductor Limited; Intel Technology Finance Limited; Intel Technology Phils., Inc. (Philippines); Intel Technology Sdn. Berhad (Malaysia); Mission College Investments Ltd. (Cayman Islands).

Principal Operating Units

Mobility Group; Digital Enterprise Group; Digital Home Group; Digital Health Group; Channel Platforms Group.

Principal Competitors

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Texas Instruments Incorporated; International Business Machines Corporation; STMicroelectronics N.V.

Further Reading

Brandt, Richard, Otis Port, and Robert D. Hof, "Intel: The Next Revolution," Business Week, September 26, 1988, p. 74.

Bylinsky, Gene, "Intel's Biggest Shrinking Job Yet," Fortune, May 3, 1982, pp. 250+.

Clark, Don, "AMD Files Broad Suit Against Intel," Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2005, p. A3.

------, "Change of Pace: Big Bet Behind Intel Comeback; In Chips, Speed Isn't Everything," Wall Street Journal, November 18, 2003, p. A1.

------, "Intel's New CEO Signals Shift for Chip Maker," Wall Street Journal, November 12, 2004, p. A6.

Clark, Don, and Gary McWilliams, "Intel Bets Big on Wireless Chips," Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2003, p. A3.

Clark, Don, Nick Wingfield, and William M. Bulkeley, "Apple Is Poised to Shift to Intel As Chip Supplier," Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2005, p. A1.

Clark, Tim, "Inside Intel's Marketing Machine," Business Marketing, October 1992, pp. 14-19.

Corcoran, Elizabeth, "Reinventing Intel," Forbes, May 3, 1999, pp. 154-59.

Intel: 35 Years of Innovation, Santa Clara: Intel Corporation, 2003.

Edwards, Cliff, "Getting Intel Back on the Inside Track," Business Week, November 29, 2004, p. 39.

------, "Intel: What Is CEO Craig Barrett Up To?," Business Week, March 8, 2004, pp. 56-62, 64.

------, "Shaking Up Intel's Insides," Business Week, January 31, 2005, p. 35.

Edwards, Cliff, and Ira Sager, "Intel: Can CEO Craig Barrett Reverse the Slide?," Business Week, October 15, 2001, pp. 80-86, 88, 90.

Edwards, Cliff, and Olga Karif, "This Is Not the Intel We All Know," Business Week, August 16, 2004, p. 32.

Garland, Susan B., and Andy Reinhardt, "Making Antitrust Fit High Tech," Business Week, March 22, 1999, p. 34.

Gottlieb, Carrie, "Intel's Plan for Staying on Top," Fortune, March 27, 1989, pp. 98+.

Grove, Andrew S., Swimming Across: A Memoir, New York: Warner, 2001, 290 p.

Heller, Robert, Andrew Grove, New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2001, 112 p.

Hof, Robert D., Larry Armstrong, and Gary McWilliams, "Intel Unbound," Business Week, October 9, 1995, pp. 148+.

"Is the Semiconductor Boom Too Much of a Good Thing for Intel?," Business Week, April 23, 1984, pp. 114+.

Jackson, Tim, Inside Intel: Andy Grove and the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Chip Company, New York: Dutton, 1997, 424 p.

Kirkpatrick, David, "Intel Goes for Broke," Fortune, May 16, 1994, pp. 62-66, 68.

------, "Intel's Amazing Profit Machine," Fortune, February 17, 1997, pp. 60+.

------, "Mr. Grove Goes to China," Fortune, August 17, 1998, pp. 154-61.

Lashinsky, Adam, "Is This the Right Man for Intel?," Fortune, April 18, 2005, pp. 110-12+.

Palmer, Jay, "Zero Hour," Barron's, October 4, 1999, pp. 33-34, 36.

Reinhardt, Andy, "Intel Inside Out: After a Year of Bloopers, Can the Chipmaker Get Its House in Order?," Business Week, December 4, 2000, pp. 116-17, 120.

------, "The New Intel: Craig Barrett Is Leading the Chip Giant into Riskier Terrain," Business Week, March 13, 2000, pp. 110+.

------, "Who Says Intel's Chips Are Down?," Business Week, December 7, 1998, p. 103.

Reinhardt, Andy, Ira Sager, and Peter Burrows, "Intel: Can Andy Grove Keep Profits Up in an Era of Cheap PCs?," Business Week, December 22, 1997, pp. 71-74, 76-77.

A Revolution in Progress: A History of Intel to Date, Santa Clara, Calif.: Intel Corporation, 1984.

Ristelhueber, Robert, "Intel: The Company People Love to Hate," Electronic Business Buyer, September 1993, pp. 58-67.

Roth, Daniel, "Craig Barrett Inside," Fortune, December 18, 2000, pp. 246+.

Schlender, Brent, "Intel's $10 Billion Gamble," Fortune, November 11, 2002, pp. 90-94, 98, 100, 102.

------, "Intel Unleashes Its Inner Attila," Fortune, October 15, 2001, pp. 168-70+.

Wilson, John W., "Intel Wakes Up to a Whole New Marketplace in Chips," Business Week, September 2, 1985, pp. 73+.

Yu, Albert, Creating the Digital Future: The Secrets of Consistent Innovation at Intel, New York: Free Press, 1998, 214 p.

— April Dougal Gasbarre; Updated by David E. Salamie


 

U.S. manufacturer of semiconductor computer circuits. Intel was founded in 1968 as NM Electronics by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, inventors of the integrated circuit, to manufacture large-scale integrated (LSI) circuits. In the early 1970s it introduced the most powerful semiconductor chips then known, which soon replaced the magnetic cores previously used in computer memories. IBM chose to use Intel's 8088 microprocessor (introduced 1978) in its first personal computer (the IBM PC), and Intel microprocessors became standard for all PC-type machines. Although other manufacturers eventually developed Intel-compatible microprocessors, Intel continued to power more than 75% of PCs at the beginning of the 21st century.

For more information on Intel Corp., visit Britannica.com.

 
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Wikipedia: Intel Corporation
Intel Corporation
Type Public (NASDAQINTC, SEHK: 4335)
Founded 1968 1
Headquarters Santa Clara, California
Flag of the United States United States
Key people Paul S. Otellini, CEO
Craig Barrett, Chairman
Industry Semiconductors
Products Microprocessors
Flash memory
Motherboard Chipsets
Network Interface Card
Bluetooth Chipsets
Revenue Green_Arrow_Up.svg $35.7 billion USD (2006)
Operating income Green_Arrow_Up.svg $5.7 billion USD (2006)
Net income Green_Arrow_Up.svg $5 billion USD (2006)
Employees 94,100 (2006)[1]
Slogan Leap Ahead
Website www.intel.com
1Incorporated in California in 1968, reincorporated in Delaware in 1989.[2]

Intel Corporation (NASDAQINTC; SEHK: 4335) is the world's largest semiconductor company and the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in many personal computers. Founded in 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation and based in Santa Clara, California, USA, Intel also makes motherboard chipsets, network cards and ICs, flash memory, graphic chips, embedded processors, and other devices related to communications and computing. Founded by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, 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 Pentium processor household names.

Intel was an early developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, and this represented the majority of its business until the early 1990s.[citation needed] While Intel created the first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, it was not until the creation of the personal computer (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 dominant supplier of microprocessors for PCs, and was known for aggressive and sometimes controversial tactics in defense of its market position, as well as a struggle with Microsoft for control over the direction of the PC industry.[citation needed]

The 2007 rankings of the world's 100 most powerful brands published by Millward Brown Optimor showed the company's brand value falling 10 places – from number 15 to number 25. [3]

Corporate history

Intel headquarters in Santa Clara
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Intel headquarters in Santa Clara

Intel was founded in 1968 by Gordon E. Moore (a chemist and physicist) and Robert Noyce (a physicist and co-inventor of the integrated circuit) when they left Fairchild Semiconductor. A number of other Fairchild employees also went on to participate in other Silicon Valley companies. Intel's fourth employee was Andy Grove (a chemical engineer), 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.[citation needed]

Origin of the name

At 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 electronics company, since noise is typically associated with bad interference. 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 hotel chain, so they had to buy the rights for that name at the beginning.[4]

Company's evolution

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 static random access memory (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 first microprocessor in 1971 and one of the first microcomputers in 1972,[5][6] 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 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 2006.

Sale of XScale processor business

On June 27, 2006, the sale of Intel's XScale assets was announced. Intel agreed to sell the XScale processor business to Marvell Technology Group for an estimated $600 million in cash and the assumption of unspecified liabilities. The move is intended to permit Intel to focus its resources on its core x86 and server businesses. The acquisition was completed on November 9, 2006.[7]

Market history

SRAMS and the microprocessor

The company's first products were shift register 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 the 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.)

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 8086 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 exploded in the late 1980s and 1990s, Intel was one of the primary beneficiaries.

Intel, x86 processors, and the IBM PC

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, in 1985 produced a desktop system based on the faster 80286 processor 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.

386 microprocessor

During this period Andy Grove 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 Zilog and 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 (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
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Intel Pentium 4 Processor

486, Pentium, and Itanium

Intel introduced the 486 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 Pentium, substituting a trademarked name for the former part number (numbers, like 486, cannot be trademarked). 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, 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 AMD64), then from Intel itself (the Intel 64, formerly known as EM64T). Intel continues to develop and deploy the Itanium and the IA-64 architecture as the Itanium 2.

The Hillsboro team designed the Willamette processor (code-named P67 and P68) which was marketed as the Pentium 4, and later developed the 64-bit extensions to the x86 architecture, present in some versions of the Pentium 4 and in the Intel Core 2 chips. Many chip variants were developed at an office in Haifa, Israel.

Pentium flaw

Main article: Pentium FDIV bug

In 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 corrected the error in a future chip revision, but nonetheless declined to disclose it.[citation needed]

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[8]. 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 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 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.[citation needed]

Intel Inside, Intel Systems Division, and Intel Architecture Labs

During this period, Intel undertook two major supporting programs that helped guarantee their processor's success. The first is widely-known: the 1990 "Intel Inside" 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 "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. 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 the PCI bus, USB and other innovations. This led to more rapid adoption of each of its new processors in turn.[citation needed]

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.

Another factor contributing to rapid adoption of Intel's processors during this period were the successive release of Microsoft Windows operating systems, each requiring significantly greater processor resources. The releases of Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 2000 provided impetus for successive generations of hardware.

Competition, antitrust and espionage

Two factors 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 "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.[citation needed]

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 PC microprocessors) combined with Intel's own hardball legal tactics (such as its infamous 338 patent[9] 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. Guillermo Gaede, an Argentine immigrant formerly employed both at AMD and at Intel's Arizona plant, was arrested for attempting in 1993 to sell the i486 and Pentium designs to AMD and to certain foreign powers.[10] Gaede videotaped data from his computer screen at Intel and mailed it to AMD, which alerted Intel and authorities, resulting in Gaede's arrest. Gaede was convicted and sentenced to 33 months in prison in June of 1996.[11][12]

Partnership with Apple

For more details on this topic, see Apple Intel transition.
Steve Jobs confirms the rumors of the transition at the 2005 WWDC. The lowered "e" is a humorous reference to Intel's former logo.
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Steve Jobs confirms the rumors of the transition at the 2005 WWDC. The lowered "e" is a humorous reference to Intel's former logo.

On June 6 2005, Apple CEO Steve Jobs 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 Apple computers containing Intel CPUs were announced on January 10, 2006. Apple initially planned to put Intel chips in all of their computers by the end of 2007, and later announced that it would be complete by the end of 2006[13], but Apple managed to have its entire consumer product line running on Intel processors by early August 2006. The Apple Xserve server was updated to Intel Xeon processors from November 2006 and is offered in a configuration similar to Apple's Mac Pro.[14]

Core Duo advertisement controversy


In 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".[15] The campaign was quickly pulled and several Intel executives made public apologies on the corporate website.[16]

Corporate affairs

In September 2006, Intel had nearly 100,000 employees and 200 facilities world wide. Its 2005 revenues were $38.8 billion and its Fortune 500 ranking was 49th. Its stock symbol is INTC, listed on the NASDAQ.

Leadership and corporate structure

Robert Noyce was Intel's CEO at its founding in 1968, followed by co-founder Gordon Moore in 1975. Andy Grove became the company's President in 1979 and added the CEO title in 1987 when Moore became Chairman. In 1997 Grove succeeded Moore as Chairman, and Craig Barrett, already company president, took over. On May 18 2005, Barrett handed the reins of the company over to Paul Otellini, who previously was the company president and was responsible for Intel's design win in the original IBM PC. The board of directors elected Otellini CEO, and Barrett replaced Grove as Chairman of the Board. Grove stepped down as Chairman, but will be retained as a special adviser.

Current members of the board of directors of Intel are Craig Barrett, Charlene Barshefsky, Susan Decker James Guzy, Reed Hundt, Paul Otellini, James Plummer, David Pottruck, Jane Shaw, John Thornton, and David Yoffie[17].

Employee policies

Intel is not typical of its Silicon Valley counterparts. Its culture is not as relaxed and informal as companies such as Google or Sun Microsystems. It has a fairly strict meritocracy that rewards work generously and does not keep "dead wood" employees around for very long.[18][19]

The firm promotes very 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