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 capitalist). 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.
Early history
At its founding, Intel was distinguished by its ability to make semiconductors and its first product in 1969 was the 3101 Schottky TTL bipolar 64-bit random access memory (RAM).That same year Intel produced the first metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) 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 commercially available microprocessor (Intel 4004) in 1971 and one of the first microcomputers 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.
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, 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.[24] 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.[citation needed] 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 model", 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;[26] 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.
Sonic logo
The famous D♭ D♭ G♭ D♭ A♭ jingle, sonic logo, tag, audio mnemonic (MP3 file of sonic logo) was produced by Musikvergnuegen and written by Walter Werzowa from the Austrian 1980s sampling band Edelweiss.[126] The Sonic logo has undergone substantial changes in tone since the introduction of the Pentium III, Pentium 4, and Core processors, yet keeps the same jingle.
Naming strategy
In 2006, Intel expanded its promotion of open specification platforms beyond Centrino, to include the Viiv media center PC and the business desktop Intel vPro.
In mid January 2006, Intel announced that they were dropping the long running Pentium name from their processors. The Pentium name was first used to refer to the P5 core Intel processors (Pent refers to the 5 in P5,) and was done to circumvent court rulings that prevent the trademarking of a string of numbers, so competitors could not just call their processor the same name, as had been done with the prior 386 and 486 processors. (Both of which had copies manufactured by both IBM and AMD). They phased out the Pentium names from mobile processors first, when the new Yonah chips, branded Core Solo and Core Duo, were released. The desktop processors changed when the Core 2 line of processors were released. By 2009 Intel was using a good-better-best strategy with Celeron being good, Pentium better, and the Intel Core family representing the best the company has to offer.
According to spokesman Bill Calder, since 2009, Intel has maintained only the Celeron brand, the Atom brand for netbooks and the vPro lineup for businesses. Upcoming processors will carry the Intel Core brand, but will be known as the Intel Core i7, or Core i3 depending on their segment of the market. vPro products will carry the Intel Core i7 vPro processor or the Intel Core i5 vPro processor name.[128] In October 2011, Intel started to sell its Core i7-2700K "Sandy Bridge" chip to customers worldwide.
Beginning in 2010 "Centrino" will only be applied to Intel's WiMAX and Wi-Fi technologies; it won't be a PC brand anymore. This will be an evolutionary process taking place over time, Intel acknowledges that multiple brands will be in the market including older ones throughout the transition.
