Definition: Intel

(Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA) The largest semiconductor manufacturing company in the U.S. Intel is also a leading vendor in computer, networking and communications products. Along with Microsoft's Windows software, Intel's hardware pioneered the PC and revolutionized the computer industry. Intel's x86 line of CPUs is the most widely used processor in desktop PCs, laptops and servers.

Intel was founded in 1968 by Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove in Mountain View, California. 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. For more than a decade, Intel was a leader in dynamic RAM (DRAM) chips but began to exit the memory business in the mid-1980s when DRAM became a commodity product. Later on, the company offered an all-purpose non-volatile memory that combined RAM and storage (see 3D XPoint). See core storage.

In 1971, Intel developed the microprocessor. In response to a calculator chip order from Japanese manufacturer Busicom, Intel engineer Marcian E. "Ted" Hoff determined it would make more sense to design a general-purpose machine. The resulting 4004 chip was the world's first microprocessor, a CPU on a single chip (see Intel 4004).

Although known for its x86 line, over the years, Intel developed a wide variety of chips and board-level products, including the MULTIBUS used in industrial applications. See x86, Itanium, IA-64, MULTIBUS 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. (Image courtesy of Intel Corporation.)

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. (Images courtesy of Intel Corporation.)