Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It designs, manufactures, and sells computer components such as central processing units and related products for business and consumer markets. Intel was the world's third-largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue in 2024 and has been included in the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue since 2007. It was one of the first companies listed on Nasdaq. Since 2025, Intel is partially owned by the United States government.
Intel supplies microprocessors for most manufacturers of computer systems, and is one of the developers of the x86 series of instruction sets found in most personal computers. It also manufactures chipsets, network interface controllers, flash memory, graphics processing units, and other devices related to communications and computing. Intel has a strong presence in the high-performance general-purpose and gaming PC market with its Intel Core line of CPUs, whose high-end models are among the fastest consumer CPUs, as well as its Intel Arc series of GPUs.
Intel was founded on July 18, 1968, by semiconductor pioneers Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, along with investor Arthur Rock, and is associated with the executive leadership and vision of Andrew Grove. The company was a key component of the rise of Silicon Valley as a high-tech center, as well as being an early developer of static and dynamic random-access memory chips, which represented the majority of its business until 1981. Although Intel created the world's first commercial microprocessor chip—the Intel 4004—in 1971, it was not until the success of the PC in the early 1980s that this became its primary business.
During the 1990s, the partnership between Microsoft Windows and Intel, known as Wintel, became instrumental in shaping the PC landscape, solidifying Intel's position on the market. As a result, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs in the mid-to-late 1990s, fostering the rapid growth of the PC industry. During this period, it became the dominant supplier of microprocessors, and was known for aggressive and anti-competitive tactics in defense of its market position, as well as a struggle with Microsoft for control over the direction of the PC industry. Since the 2000s and especially the late 2010s, Intel has faced increasing competition from AMD, which has led to a decline in its dominance and market share in the PC market. Nevertheless, as of 2023, Intel still leads the x86 market by a wide margin.
History
Origins
Intel was incorporated in Mountain View, California, on July 18, 1968, by Gordon E. Moore, a chemist; Robert Noyce, a physicist and co-inventor of the integrated circuit; and Arthur Rock, an investor and venture capitalist. Moore and Noyce had left Fairchild Semiconductor, where they were part of the "traitorous eight" who founded it. There were originally 500,000 shares outstanding of which Noyce bought 245,000 shares, Moore 245,000 shares, and Rock 10,000 shares; all at $1 per share. Rock offered $2,500,000 of convertible debentures to a limited group of private investors, convertible at $5 per share. Two years later, Intel became a public company via an initial public offering, raising $6.8 million. Intel was one of the first companies—and the oldest—to be listed on the then-newly established National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System. Intel's third employee was Andy Grove, a chemical engineer, who ran the company through much of the 1980s and the high-growth 1990s.In deciding on a name, Moore and Noyce quickly rejected "Moore Noyce", a near-homophone for "more noise" – an ill-suited name for an electronics company, since noise in electronics is usually undesirable and typically associated with bad interference. Instead, they founded the company as NM Electronics on July 18, 1968, but by the end of the month had changed the name to Intel, which stood for Integrated Electronics. 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 logic circuits using semiconductor devices. The founders' goal was the semiconductor memory market, widely predicted to replace magnetic-core memory. Its first product, a quick entry into the small, high-speed memory market in 1969, was the 3101 Schottky TTL bipolar 64-bit static random-access memory, which was nearly twice as fast as earlier Schottky diode implementations by Fairchild and the Electrotechnical Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan. In the same year, Intel also produced the 3301 Schottky bipolar 1024-bit read-only memory and the first commercial metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor silicon gate SRAM chip, the 256-bit 1101.While the 1101 was a significant advance, its complex static cell structure made it too slow and costly for mainframe computer memories. The three-transistor cell implemented in the first commercially available dynamic random-access memory, the 1103 released in 1970, solved these issues. The 1103 was the bestselling semiconductor memory chip in the world by 1972, as it replaced core memory in many applications. 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.
File:Federico Faggin.jpg|thumb|upright|Federico Faggin, designer of the Intel 4004
Intel created the first commercially available microprocessor, the Intel 4004, in 1971. The microprocessor represented a notable advance in the technology of integrated circuitry, as it miniaturized the central processing unit of a computer, which then made it possible for small machines to perform calculations that in the past only very large machines could do. Considerable technological innovation was needed before the microprocessor could become the basis of what was first known as a "mini computer" and then a "personal computer". Subsequently, Intel would create one of the first microcomputers in 1973.
Intel opened its first international manufacturing facility in 1972, in Malaysia, which would host multiple Intel operations, before opening assembly facilities and semiconductor plants in Singapore and Jerusalem, Israel, in the early 1980s, and manufacturing and development centers in China, India, and Costa Rica in the 1990s. By the early 1980s, its business was dominated by DRAM chips. However, increased competition from Japanese semiconductor manufacturers had, by 1983, dramatically reduced the profitability of this market. The growing success of the IBM personal computer, based on an Intel microprocessor, was among factors that convinced Gordon Moore to shift the company's focus to microprocessors and to change fundamental aspects of that business model. Moore's decision to sole-source Intel's model 80386 chip played into the company's continuing success.
By the end of the 1980s, buoyed by its position as microprocessor supplier to IBM and IBM's competitors within the rapidly growing personal computer market, Intel embarked on 10 years of unprecedented growth as the primary and most profitable hardware supplier to the PC industry, part of the winning "Wintel" combination of Intel CPUs running Microsoft Windows. This partnership would become instrumental in shaping the PC landscape, and solidified Intel's position on the market. Moore handed over his position as CEO to Andy Grove in 1987. 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.
During that period, it became the dominant supplier of PC microprocessors and was known for aggressive and anti-competitive tactics in defense of its market position, particularly against AMD, as well as a struggle with Microsoft for control over the direction of the PC industry. In addition, the company is considered a key component of the rise of Silicon Valley as a high-tech center between the 1970s and 2000s.
Challenges to dominance (2000s)
As Intel exited other markets, the company depended so much on the 80386 and its successors that a marketing employee said that "there's only one product, and Andy Grove's the product manager". After 2000, growth in demand for high-end microprocessors slowed. Competitors, most notably AMD, garnered significant market share, initially in low-end and mid-range processors but ultimately across the product range. Intel's dominant position in its core market was greatly reduced, mostly due to the controversial NetBurst microarchitecture. 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.Litigation
Intel was embroiled in litigation for several years. U.S. law did not initially recognize intellectual property rights related to microprocessor topology, until the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984, a law sought by Intel and the Semiconductor Industry Association. During the late 1980s and 1990s, 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 had been simmering since the early 1990s and had been the cause of one lawsuit against Intel in 1991. In 2004 and 2005, AMD brought further claims against Intel related to unfair competition.Reorganization and success with Intel Core (2005–2015)
In 2005, CEO Paul Otellini reorganized the company to refocus its core processor and chipset business on platforms.On June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, announced that Apple would be using Intel's x86 processors for its Macintosh computers, switching from the PowerPC architecture developed by the AIM alliance. This was seen as a win for Intel; an analyst called the move "risky" and "foolish", as Intel's current offerings at the time were considered to be behind those of AMD and IBM.
In 2006, Intel unveiled its Core microarchitecture; 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, Intel had another advance when it introduced the Penryn microarchitecture, fabricated using the 45 nm process node. Later that year, Intel released a processor with the Nehalem architecture to positive reception.
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 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.
In 2008, Intel spun off key assets of a solar startup business effort to form an independent company, SpectraWatt Incorporated. In 2011, SpectraWatt filed for bankruptcy.
In February 2011, Intel began to build a new microprocessor manufacturing facility in Chandler, Arizona, completed in 2013 at a cost of $5 billion. The building is now the 10 nm-certified Fab 42 and is connected to the other Fabs on Ocotillo Campus via an enclosed bridge known as the Link. The company produces three-quarters of its products in the United States, although three-quarters of its revenue come from overseas.
The Alliance for Affordable Internet was launched in October 2013. Intel is part of the coalition of public and private organizations that includes Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the A4AI sought to make Internet access more affordable to broaden access in the developing world, where only 31% of people were online. Google would help lower Internet access prices to below the UN Broadband Commission's worldwide target of 5% of monthly income.