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Intel Corporation is an American
multinational corporation A multinational corporation (MNC; also called a multinational enterprise (MNE), transnational enterprise (TNE), transnational corporation (TNC), international corporation, or stateless corporation, is a corporate organization that owns and cont ...
and
technology company A technology company (or tech company) is a company that focuses primarily on the manufacturing, support, research and development of—most commonly computing, telecommunication and consumer electronics–based—technology-intensive products and ...
headquartered in
Santa Clara, California Santa Clara ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "Clare of Assisi, Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities and towns i ...
, and incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer components such as
central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary Processor (computing), processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes Instruction (computing), instructions ...
s (CPUs) and related products for business and consumer markets. It is one of the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturers by revenue, and ranked in the ''Fortune'' 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue for nearly a decade, from 2007 to 2016 fiscal years, until it was removed from the ranking in 2018. In 2020, it was reinstated and ranked 45th, being the 7th-largest technology company in the ranking. It was one of the first companies listed on
Nasdaq The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...
. Intel supplies
microprocessors A microprocessor is a computer processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circuitry r ...
for most manufacturers of computer systems, and is one of the developers of the
x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...
series of instruction sets found in most
personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...
s (PCs). It also manufactures
chipset In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components on one or more integrated circuits that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. The chipset is usually found on the motherboard of computers. Chips ...
s,
network interface controller A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter and physical network interface) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network. Early network interface ...
s,
flash memory Flash memory is an Integrated circuit, electronic Non-volatile memory, non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for t ...
,
graphics processing units A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal co ...
(GPUs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), 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 Intel Core is a line of multi-core (with the exception of Core Solo and Core 2 Solo) central processing units (CPUs) for midrange, embedded, workstation, high-end and enthusiast computer markets marketed by Intel Corporation. These processors ...
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 Gordon Earle Moore (January 3, 1929 – March 24, 2023) was an American businessman, engineer, and the co-founder and emeritus chairman of Intel Corporation. He proposed Moore's law which makes the observation that the number of transistors i ...
and
Robert Noyce Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", was an American physicist and entrepreneur who co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel Corporation in 1968. He was also credited w ...
, along with investor
Arthur Rock Arthur Rock (born August 19, 1926) is an American businessman and investor. Based in Silicon Valley, California, he was an early investor in major firms including Intel, Apple Inc., Apple, Scientific Data Systems and Teledyne Technologies, Teled ...
, and is associated with the executive leadership and vision of
Andrew Grove Andrew "Andy" Stephen Grove (born Gróf András István; 2 September 1936 – 21 March 2016) was a Hungarian-American businessman and engineer who served as the third CEO of Intel Corporation. He escaped from the Hungarian People's Republic dur ...
. The company was a key component of the rise of
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...
as a
high-tech High technology (high tech or high-tech), also known as advanced technology (advanced tech) or exotechnology, is technology that is at the cutting edge: the highest form of technology available. It can be defined as either the most complex or ...
center, as well as being an early developer of static (SRAM) and
dynamic random-access memory Dynamics (from Greek language, Greek δυναμικός ''dynamikos'' "powerful", from δύναμις ''dynamis'' "power (disambiguation), power") or dynamic may refer to: Physics and engineering * Dynamics (mechanics), the study of forces and t ...
(DRAM) chips, which represented the majority of its business until 1981. Although Intel created the world's first commercial microprocessor chip—the
Intel 4004 The Intel 4004 was part of the 4 chip MCS-4 micro computer set, released by the Intel, Intel Corporation in November 1971; the 4004 being part of the first commercially marketed microprocessor chipset, and the first in a long line of List of I ...
—in 1971, it was not until the success of the PC in the early 1990s that this became its primary business. During the 1990s, the partnership between
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
and Intel, known as "
Wintel Wintel (portmanteau of ''Windows'' and ''Intel'') is the partnership of Microsoft and Intel producing personal computers (PCs) using Intel x86-compatible processors running Windows. Background By the early 1980s, the chaos and incompatibility ...
", became instrumental in shaping the PC landscape, and solidified 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
computer industry A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as ''programs'', ...
. During this period, it became the dominant supplier of PC microprocessors, with a
market share Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a Market (economics), market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those ...
of 90%, and was known for aggressive and anti-competitive tactics in defense of its market position, particularly against
AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
, as well as a struggle with
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
for control over the direction of the PC industry. Since the 2000s and especially since the late 2010s, Intel has faced increasing competition, which has led to a reduction in its dominance and market share in the PC market. Nevertheless, with a 68.4% market share as of 2023, Intel still leads the x86 market by a wide margin. In addition, the company's ability to design and
manufacture Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...
its own chips is a rarity in the
semiconductor industry The semiconductor industry is the aggregate of companies engaged in the design and fabrication of semiconductors and semiconductor devices, such as transistors and integrated circuits. Its roots can be traced to the invention of the transistor ...
, as most chip designers do not have their own production facilities and instead rely on contract manufacturers (e.g.
TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC or Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is one of the world's most valuable semiconductor companies, the world' ...
,
Foxconn Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. (), Trade name, doing business as Hon Hai Technology Group () in Taiwan, Foxconn Technology Group () in China, and Foxconn () internationally, is a Taiwanese multinational corporation, multinational electron ...
and
Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...
), as AMD and
Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...
do.


History


Origins

Intel was incorporated in
Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...
, on July 18, 1968, by Gordon E. Moore, a
chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...
;
Robert Noyce Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", was an American physicist and entrepreneur who co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel Corporation in 1968. He was also credited w ...
, a physicist and co-inventor of the
integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...
; and
Arthur Rock Arthur Rock (born August 19, 1926) is an American businessman and investor. Based in Silicon Valley, California, he was an early investor in major firms including Intel, Apple Inc., Apple, Scientific Data Systems and Teledyne Technologies, Teled ...
, an investor and
venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...
ist. Moore and Noyce had left
Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument by the " traitorous eight" who defected from Shockley Semi ...
, 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 (equivalent to $21 million in 2022), convertible at $5 per share. Two years later, Intel became a
public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of share capital, stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) co ...
via an
initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...
(IPO), raising $6.8 million ($23.50 per share). Intel was one of the first companies—and the oldest—to be listed on the then-newly established
National Association of Securities Dealers The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is a private American corporation that acts as a self-regulatory organization (SRO) that regulates member brokerage firms and exchange markets. FINRA is the successor to the National Associati ...
Automated Quotation System (
NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...
). Intel's third employee was Andy Grove, a
chemical engineer A chemical engineer is a professional equipped with the knowledge of chemistry and other basic sciences who works principally in the chemical industry to convert basic raw materials into a variety of Product (chemistry), products and deals with ...
, 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 Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...
company, since noise in electronics is usually undesirable and typically associated with bad
interference Interference is the act of interfering, invading, or poaching. Interference may also refer to: Communications * Interference (communication), anything which alters, modifies, or disrupts a message * Adjacent-channel interference, caused by extra ...
. 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 circuit A logic gate is a device that performs a Boolean function, a logical operation performed on one or more binary inputs that produces a single binary output. Depending on the context, the term may refer to an ideal logic gate, one that has, for ...
s using
semiconductor device A semiconductor device is an electronic component that relies on the electronic properties of a semiconductor material (primarily silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide, as well as organic semiconductors) for its function. Its conductivit ...
s. The founders' goal was the
semiconductor memory Semiconductor memory is a digital electronic semiconductor device used for digital data storage, such as computer memory. It typically refers to devices in which data is stored within metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) memory cells on a si ...
market, widely predicted to replace
magnetic-core memory In computing, magnetic-core memory is a form of random-access memory. It predominated for roughly 20 years between 1955 and 1975, and is often just called core memory, or, informally, core. Core memory uses toroids (rings) of a hard magneti ...
. 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 Static random-access memory (static RAM or SRAM) is a type of random-access memory (RAM) that uses latching circuitry (flip-flop) to store each bit. SRAM is volatile memory; data is lost when power is removed. The ''static'' qualifier diffe ...
(SRAM), 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 Read-only memory (ROM) is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be electronically modified after the manufacture of the memory device. Read-only memory is useful for storing sof ...
(ROM) and the first commercial
metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor upright=1.3, Two power MOSFETs in amperes">A in the ''on'' state, dissipating up to about 100 watt">W and controlling a load of over 2000 W. A matchstick is pictured for scale. In electronics, the metal–oxide–semiconductor field- ...
(MOSFET) 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 A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...
memories. The three-
transistor A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch electrical signals and electric power, power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semicondu ...
cell implemented in the first commercially available
dynamic random-access memory Dynamics (from Greek language, Greek δυναμικός ''dynamikos'' "powerful", from δύναμις ''dynamis'' "power (disambiguation), power") or dynamic may refer to: Physics and engineering * Dynamics (mechanics), the study of forces and t ...
(DRAM), 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 Product may refer to: Business * Product (business), an item that can be offered to a market to satisfy the desire or need of a customer. * Product (project management), a deliverable or set of deliverables that contribute to a business solution ...
, still dominated by various memory devices. Intel created the first commercially available microprocessor, the
Intel 4004 The Intel 4004 was part of the 4 chip MCS-4 micro computer set, released by the Intel, Intel Corporation in November 1971; the 4004 being part of the first commercially marketed microprocessor chipset, and the first in a long line of List of I ...
, 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". Intel also created one of the first
microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...
s in 1973. Intel opened its first international manufacturing facility in 1972, in
Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...
, which would host multiple Intel operations, before opening assembly facilities and semiconductor plants in
Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...
and
Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
in the early 1980s, and manufacturing and development centers in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
,
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
, and
Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...
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 International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
personal computer, based on an Intel microprocessor, was among factors that convinced Gordon Moore (CEO since 1975) 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 386 chip played into the company's continuing success. By the end of the 1980s, buoyed by its fortuitous 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. Moore handed over his position as CEO to Andy Grove in 1987. By launching its Intel Inside
marketing campaign Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce. Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or ma ...
in 1991, Intel was able to associate
brand loyalty In marketing and consumer behaviour, brand loyalty describes a consumer's persistent positive feelings towards a familiar brand and their dedication to purchasing the brand's products and/or services repeatedly regardless of deficiencies, a ...
with consumer selection, so that by the end of the 1990s, its line of
Pentium Pentium is a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel from 1993 to 2023. The Pentium (original), original Pentium was Intel's fifth generation processor, succeeding the i486; Pentium was Intel's flagship proce ...
processors had become a household name.


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 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
(Intel's largest competitor in its primary
x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...
architecture market), 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 The NetBurst microarchitecture, called P68 inside Intel, was the successor to the P6 microarchitecture in the x86 family of central processing units (CPUs) made by Intel. The first CPU to use this architecture was the Willamette-core Pentium ...
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 Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...
related to microprocessor
topology Topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of a Mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformat ...
(circuit layouts), until the
Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 The Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 (or SCPA) is an act of the US Congress that makes the layouts of integrated circuits legally protected upon registration, and hence illegal to copy without permission. It is an integrated circuit ...
, a law sought by Intel and the
Semiconductor Industry Association The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) is a trade association and lobbying group founded in 1977 that represents the United States semiconductor industry. It is located in Washington, D.C. About The Semiconductor Industry Association (SI ...
(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 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in the x86 architect ...
CPU."Bill Gates Speaks", page 29. The
lawsuit A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today ...
s were noted to significantly burden the competition with legal bills, even if Intel lost the suits.
Antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust l ...
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 Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market. Antitrust laws ensure businesses do not engage in competitive practices that harm other, usually smaller, businesses or consumers. ...
.


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 (enterprise, digital home, digital health, and mobility). On June 6, 2005,
Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...
, then CEO of
Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
, announced that Apple would be using Intel's x86 processors for its
Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
computers, switching from the
PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...
architecture developed by the
AIM alliance The AIM alliance, also known as the PowerPC alliance, was formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc., Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Its goal was to create an industry-wide open-standard computing platform based on the IBM POWER architecture, POWE ...
. 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 to widespread critical acclaim; 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 "tick" 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 XScale is a microarchitecture for central processing units initially designed by Intel implementing the ARM architecture (version 5) instruction set. XScale comprises several distinct families: IXP, IXC, IOP, PXA and CE (see more below), with some ...
assets was announced. Intel agreed to sell the XScale processor business to
Marvell Technology Group Marvell Technology, Inc. is an American company, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, which develops and produces semiconductors and related technology. Founded in 1995, the company had more than 6,500 employees as of 2024, with over 10,000 ...
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 Inc. In 2011, SpectraWatt filed for bankruptcy.''
EE Times ''EE Times'' (''Electronic Engineering Times'') is an electronics industry magazine published in the United States since 1972. EE Times is currently owned by AspenCore, a division of Arrow Electronics since August 2016. Ownership and status '' ...
''
"Intel's solar spinoff files for bankruptcy"
August 23, 2011. Retrieved August 25, 2011.
In February 2011, Intel began to build a new microprocessor manufacturing facility in
Chandler, Arizona Chandler is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and a suburb in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is the List of municipalities in Arizona, fourth-most populous city in 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 (12, 22, 32) 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 (A4AI) was launched in October 2013 and Intel is part of the coalition of public and private organizations that also includes
Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
,
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
, and
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
. Led by
Sir Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow ...
, the A4AI seeks to make Internet access more affordable to broaden access in the developing world, where only 31% of people are online. Google will help to decrease Internet access prices so that they fall below the UN Broadband Commission's worldwide target of 5% of monthly income.


Attempts at entering the smartphone market

In April 2011, Intel began a pilot project with ZTE Corporation to produce smartphones using the
Intel Atom Intel Atom is a line of IA-32 and x86-64 instruction set ultra-low-voltage processors by Intel Corporation designed to reduce electric consumption and power dissipation in comparison with ordinary processors of the Intel Core series. Atom is m ...
processor for China's domestic market. In December 2011, Intel announced that it reorganized several of its business units into a new mobile and communications group that would be responsible for the company's smartphone, tablet, and wireless efforts. Intel planned to introduce Medfield – a processor for tablets and smartphones – to the market in 2012, as an effort to compete with Arm. As a 32-nanometer processor, Medfield is designed to be energy-efficient, one of Arm's chips' core features.Agam Shah, '' IDG News''
"Intel's New Smartphone Chip Is Key ARM Battle"
. June 7, 2011. Retrieved July 8, 2011.
Intel's partnership with Google was announced at the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) 2011 in San Francisco. In January 2012, Google announced Android 2.3, supporting Intel's Atom microprocessor. In 2013, Intel's Kirk Skaugen said that Intel's exclusive focus on Microsoft platforms was a thing of the past and that they would now support all "tier-one operating systems" such as Linux, Android, iOS, and Chrome. In 2014, Intel cut thousands of employees in response to "evolving market trends", and offered to subsidize manufacturers for the extra costs involved in using Intel chips in their tablets. In April 2016, Intel cancelled the
SoFIA Sofia is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, largest city of Bulgaria. It is situated in the Sofia Valley at the foot of the Vitosha mountain, in the western part of the country. The city is built west of the Is ...
platform and the Broxton Atom SoC for smartphones, effectively leaving the smartphone market.


Intel custom foundry

Finding itself with excess fab capacity after the failure of the
Ultrabook Ultrabook is a class of premium consumer-grade notebook computers. The term was originated by and is trademarked by Intel, replacing the earlier Centrino mobile platform. Introduced in 2011, they were originally marketed as featuring ultra thi ...
to gain market traction and with PC sales declining, in 2013 Intel reached a
foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...
agreement to produce chips for
Altera Altera Corporation is a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015 before becoming independent once again in 2025 as a company focused on developm ...
using a 14 nm process. General Manager of Intel's custom foundry division Sunit Rikhi indicated that Intel would pursue further such deals in the future. This was after poor sales of
Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012, made available for download via Microsoft ...
hardware caused a major retrenchment for most of the major semiconductor manufacturers, except for Qualcomm, which continued to see healthy purchases from its largest customer, Apple. As of July 2013, five companies were using Intel's fabs via the ''Intel Custom Foundry'' division: Achronix, Tabula, Netronome,
Microsemi Microsemi Corporation was an Aliso Viejo, California-based provider of semiconductor and system solutions for aerospace & defense, communications, data center and industrial markets. In February 2018, it was announced that Chandler, Arizona-ba ...
, and
Panasonic is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Japan. It was founded in 1918 as in Fukushima-ku, Osaka, Fukushima by Kōnosuke Matsushita. The company was incorporated in 1935 and renamed and c ...
most are field-programmable gate array (FPGA) makers, but Netronome designs network processors. Only Achronix began shipping chips made by Intel using the 22 nm Tri-Gate process. Several other customers also exist but were not announced at the time. The foundry business was closed in 2018 due to Intel's issues with its manufacturing.


Security and manufacturing challenges (2016–2021)

Intel continued its tick-tock model of a microarchitecture change followed by a die shrink until the 6th-generation Core family based on the Skylake microarchitecture. This model was deprecated in 2016, with the release of the 7th-generation Core family (codenamed
Kaby Lake Kaby Lake is Intel's codename for its seventh generation Core microprocessor family announced on August 30, 2016. Like the preceding Skylake, Kaby Lake is produced using a 14 nanometer manufacturing process technology. Breaking with Intel's p ...
), ushering in the process–architecture–optimization model. As Intel struggled to shrink their process node from
14 nm The "14 nanometer process" refers to a marketing term for the MOSFET technology node that is the successor to the "22nm" (or "20nm") node. The "14nm" was so named by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS). Until about ...
to 10 nm, processor development slowed down and the company continued to use the Skylake microarchitecture until 2020, albeit with optimizations.


10 nm process node issues

While Intel originally planned to introduce 10 nm products in 2016, it later became apparent that there were manufacturing issues with the node. The first microprocessor under that node, Cannon Lake (marketed as 8th-generation Core), was released in small quantities in 2018. The company first delayed the mass production of their 10 nm products to 2017. They later delayed mass production to 2018, and then to 2019. Despite rumors of the process being cancelled, Intel finally introduced mass-produced 10 nm 10th-generation Intel Core mobile processors (codenamed " Ice Lake") in September 2019. Intel later acknowledged that their strategy to shrink to 10 nm was too aggressive. While other foundries used up to four steps in 10 nm or 7 nm processes, the company's 10 nm process required up to five or six multi-pattern steps. In addition, Intel's 10 nm process is denser than its counterpart processes from other foundries. Since Intel's microarchitecture and process node development were coupled, processor development stagnated.


Security flaws

In early January 2018, it was reported that all
Intel processors This generational list of Intel processors attempts to present all of Intel Corporation, Intel's microprocessor, processors from the 4-bit computing, 4-bit Intel 4004, 4004 (1971) to the present high-end offerings. Concise technical data is give ...
made since 1995 (besides
Intel Itanium Itanium (; ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). The Itanium architecture originated at Hewlett-Packard (HP), and was later jointly developed by HP and I ...
and pre-2013
Intel Atom Intel Atom is a line of IA-32 and x86-64 instruction set ultra-low-voltage processors by Intel Corporation designed to reduce electric consumption and power dissipation in comparison with ordinary processors of the Intel Core series. Atom is m ...
) had been subject to two security flaws dubbed Meltdown and Spectre.


Renewed competition and other developments (2018–present)

Due to Intel's issues with its 10 nm process node and the company's slow processor development, the company now found itself in a market with intense competition. The company's main competitor, AMD, introduced the
Zen Zen (; from Chinese: ''Chán''; in Korean: ''Sŏn'', and Vietnamese: ''Thiền'') is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition that developed in China during the Tang dynasty by blending Indian Mahayana Buddhism, particularly Yogacara and Madhyamaka phil ...
microarchitecture and a new
chiplet A chiplet is a tiny integrated circuit (IC) that contains a well-defined subset of functionality. It is designed to be combined with other chiplets on an interposer in a single package to create a complex component such as a computer processor. E ...
-based design to critical acclaim. Since its introduction, AMD, once unable to compete with Intel in the high-end CPU market, has undergone a resurgence, and Intel's dominance and market share have considerably decreased. In addition, Apple began to transition away from the x86 architecture and Intel processors to their own
Apple silicon Apple silicon is a series of system on a chip (SoC) and system in a package (SiP) processors designed by Apple Inc., mainly using the ARM architecture family, ARM architecture. They are used in nearly all of the company's devices including Mac ...
for their Macintosh computers in 2020. The transition is expected to affect Intel minimally; however, it might prompt other PC manufacturers to reevaluate their reliance on Intel and the x86 architecture.


'IDM 2.0' strategy

On March 23, 2021, CEO Pat Gelsinger laid out new plans for the company. These include a new strategy, called IDM 2.0, that includes investments in manufacturing facilities, use of both internal and external foundries, and a new foundry business called Intel Foundry Services (IFS), a standalone business unit. Unlike Intel Custom Foundry, IFS will offer a combination of packaging and process technology, and Intel's IP portfolio including x86 cores. Other plans for the company include a partnership with
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
and a new event for developers and engineers, called "Intel ON". Gelsinger also confirmed that Intel's 7 nm process is on track, and that the first products using their 7 nm process (also known as Intel 4) are
Ponte Vecchio The Ponte Vecchio (; "Old Bridge") is a medieval stone closed-spandrel segmental arch bridge over the Arno, in Florence, Italy. The only bridge in Florence spared from destruction during World War II, it is noted for the shops built along it; ...
and Meteor Lake. In January 2022, Intel reportedly selected
New Albany, Ohio New Albany is a City (United States), city in the U.S. state of Ohio. It is located northeast of the state capital of Columbus, Ohio, Columbus. Most of the city is located in Franklin County, Ohio, Franklin County and a small portion extends i ...
, near
Columbus, Ohio Columbus (, ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities in Ohio, most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 United States census, 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the List of United States ...
, as the site for a major new manufacturing facility. The facility will cost at least $20 billion. The company expects the facility to begin producing chips by 2025. The same year Intel also choose
Magdeburg Magdeburg (; ) is the Capital city, capital of the Germany, German States of Germany, state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is on the Elbe river. Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archbishopric of Mag ...
,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, as a site for two new chip mega factories for €17 billion (topping Tesla's manufacturing plant investment in
Brandenburg Brandenburg, officially the State of Brandenburg, is a States of Germany, state in northeastern Germany. Brandenburg borders Poland and the states of Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. It is the List of Ger ...
). The start of the construction was initially planned for 2023, but this has been postponed to late 2024, while the production start is scheduled for 2027. Including subcontractors, this would create 10,000 new jobs. In August 2022, Intel signed a $30billion partnership with Brookfield Asset Management to fund its then-recent factory expansions. As part of the deal, Intel would have a controlling stake by funding 51% of the cost of building new chip-making facilities in Chandler. Brookfield owns the remaining 49% stake, allowing the companies to split the revenue from those facilities. On January 31, 2023, as part of $3 billion in cost reductions, Intel announced pay cuts affecting employees above midlevel, ranging from 5% upwards. It also suspended bonuses and merit pay increases, reducing retirement plan matching. These cost reductions followed layoffs announced in the fall of 2022. In October 2023, Intel confirmed it would be the first commercial user of high-NA EUV lithography tool, as part of its plan to regain process leadership from
TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC or Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is one of the world's most valuable semiconductor companies, the world' ...
. In December 2023, Intel unveiled Gaudi3, an
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
(AI) chip for
generative AI Generative artificial intelligence (Generative AI, GenAI, or GAI) is a subfield of artificial intelligence that uses generative models to produce text, images, videos, or other forms of data. These models learn the underlying patterns and str ...
software which launched in 2024 and compete with rival chips from
Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...
and AMD. On June 4, 2024, Intel announced AI chips for data centers, the Xeon 6 processor, aiming for better performance and power efficiency compared to its predecessor. Intel's Gaudi 2 and Gaudi 3
AI accelerators A neural processing unit (NPU), also known as AI accelerator or deep learning processor, is a class of specialized hardware acceleration, hardware accelerator or computer system designed to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine lear ...
were revealed to be more cost-effective than competitors' offerings. Additionally, Intel disclosed architecture details for its Lunar Lake processors for AI PCs, which were released on September 24, 2024. In August 2024, after posting $1.6 billion in losses for Q2, Intel announced that it intends to cut 15,000 jobs to save $10 billion in 2025. In order to reach this goal, the company will offer early retirement and voluntary departure options. On November 1, 2024, it was announced that Intel will drop out of the
Dow Jones Industrial Average The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow (), is a stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. The DJIA is one of the oldest and most commonly followed equity indice ...
on November 8 prior to the stock market open, with Nvidia taking its place. In December 2024, Intel's CEO Pat Gelsinger was ousted amid ongoing struggles to revitalize the company, which has seen a significant decline in stock value during his tenure. Gelsinger's resignation, effective December 1, followed a board meeting where directors expressed dissatisfaction with the slow progress of his ambitious turnaround strategy. Despite efforts to enhance Intel's manufacturing capabilities and compete with rivals like AMD and Nvidia, the company faced mounting challenges, including a $16.6 billion loss and a 60% drop in share prices since Gelsinger's appointment in 2021. After his departure, Intel appointed David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus interim co-CEOs while searching for a permanent successor. Gelsinger's exit underscored the turmoil at Intel as it grappled with its identity crisis and sought to regain its semiconductor industry position. On March 13, 2025, Intel announced the appointment of Lip-Bu Tan as their new CEO, effective March 18, after 4 months of having interim co-CEOs.


Product and market history


SRAMs, DRAMs, and the microprocessor

Intel's first products were
shift register A shift register is a type of digital circuit using a cascade of flip-flop (electronics), flip-flops where the output of one flip-flop is connected to the input of the next. They share a single clock signal, which causes the data stored in the syst ...
memory and random-access
memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...
integrated circuits, and Intel grew to be a leader in the fiercely competitive
DRAM Dram, DRAM, or drams may refer to: Technology and engineering * Dram (unit), a unit of mass and volume, and an informal name for a small amount of liquor, especially whisky or whiskey * Dynamic random-access memory, a type of electronic semicondu ...
, SRAM, and
ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...
markets throughout the 1970s. Concurrently, Intel engineers
Marcian Hoff Marcian Edward "Ted" Hoff Jr. (born October 28, 1937, in Rochester, New York) is one of the inventors of the microprocessor. Education and work history Hoff received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic In ...
,
Federico Faggin Federico Faggin (, ; born 1 December 1941) is an Italian-American physicist, engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is best known for designing the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. He led the 4004 (MCS-4) project and the desig ...
, Stanley Mazor, and Masatoshi Shima invented Intel's first
microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...
. Originally developed for the Japanese company
Busicom was a Japanese company that manufactured and sold computer-related products headquartered in Taito, Tokyo. It owned the rights to Intel's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, which they created in partnership with Intel in 1970. Busicom aske ...
to replace a number of ASICs in a calculator already produced by Busicom, the
Intel 4004 The Intel 4004 was part of the 4 chip MCS-4 micro computer set, released by the Intel, Intel Corporation in November 1971; the 4004 being part of the first commercially marketed microprocessor chipset, and the first in a long line of List of I ...
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 Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...
for the almost-simultaneous invention of the microprocessor.) 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 focused the company 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 The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and June 8, 1978, when it was released. The Intel 8088, released July 1, 1979, is a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allo ...
microprocessor. Until then, the 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
AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
. When the PC industry boomed in the late 1980s and 1990s, Intel was one of the primary beneficiaries.


Early x86 processors and the IBM PC

Despite the ultimate importance of the microprocessor, the 4004 and its successors the 8008 and the
8080 The Intel 8080 is Intel's second 8-bit microprocessor. Introduced in April 1974, the 8080 was an enhanced successor to the earlier Intel 8008 microprocessor, although without binary compatibility.'' Electronic News'' was a weekly trade newspa ...
were never major revenue contributors at Intel. In 1975, the company had started a project to develop a highly advanced 32-bit microprocessor, finally released in 1981 as the Intel iAPX 432. The project was too ambitious and the processor was never able to meet its performance objectives, and it failed in the marketplace. (Intel eventually extended the
x86 architecture x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. T ...
to 32 bits instead.) As the next processor, the
8086 The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and June 8, 1978, when it was released. The Intel 8088, released July 1, 1979, is a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allo ...
(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 The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...
division, though the importance of this was not fully realized at the time.
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
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 Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology, information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compati ...
, the first IBM PC "clone" manufacturer, produced a desktop system based on the faster 80286 processor in 1985 and in 1986 quickly followed with the first
80386 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in the x86 architect ...
-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
Andrew Grove Andrew "Andy" Stephen Grove (born Gróf András István; 2 September 1936 – 21 March 2016) was a Hungarian-American businessman and engineer who served as the third CEO of Intel Corporation. He escaped from the Hungarian People's Republic dur ...
dramatically redirected the company, closing much of its
DRAM Dram, DRAM, or drams may refer to: Technology and engineering * Dram (unit), a unit of mass and volume, and an informal name for a small amount of liquor, especially whisky or whiskey * Dynamic random-access memory, a type of electronic semicondu ...
business and directing resources to the
microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...
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 (
second source In the electronics industry, a second source is a company that is licensed to manufacture and sell components originally designed by another company (the first source). It is common for engineers and purchasers to seek components that are availab ...
s) produce chips they could use to ensure a consistent supply. The 8080 and 8086-series microprocessors were produced by several companies, notably AMD, with which Intel had a technology-sharing contract. Grove made the decision not to license the 386 design to other manufacturers, instead, producing it in three geographically distinct factories:
Santa Clara, California Santa Clara ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "Clare of Assisi, Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities and towns i ...
;
Hillsboro, Oregon Hillsboro ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon and is the county seat of Washington County, Oregon, Washington County. Situated in the Tualatin Valley on the west side of the Portland metropolitan area, the city hosts many High tech, high-te ...
; and Chandler, a suburb of
Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona. With over 1.6 million residents at the 2020 census, it is the ...
. He convinced customers that this would ensure consistent delivery. In doing this, Intel breached its contract with AMD, which sued and was paid millions of dollars in damages but could not manufacture new Intel CPU designs any longer. (Instead, AMD started to develop and manufacture its own competing x86 designs.) As the success of
Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology, information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compati ...
'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.


486, Pentium, and Itanium

Intel introduced the 486 microprocessor in 1989, and in 1990 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 project was earlier known as "Operation Bicycle", referring to the cycles of the processor through two parallel execution pipelines. The P5 was introduced in 1993 as the Intel
Pentium Pentium is a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel from 1993 to 2023. The Pentium (original), original Pentium was Intel's fifth generation processor, succeeding the i486; Pentium was Intel's flagship proce ...
, substituting a registered trademark name for the former part number. (Numbers, such as 486, cannot be legally registered as trademarks in the United States.) The P6 followed in 1995 as the
Pentium Pro The Pentium Pro is a sixth-generation x86 microprocessor developed and manufactured by Intel and introduced on November 1, 1995. It implements the P6 (microarchitecture), P6 microarchitecture (sometimes termed i686), and was the first x86 Intel C ...
and improved into the
Pentium II The Pentium II is a brand of sixth-generation Intel x86 microprocessors based on the P6 (microarchitecture), P6 microarchitecture, introduced on May 7, 1997. It combined the ''P6'' microarchitecture seen on the Pentium Pro with the MMX (instruc ...
in 1997. New architectures were developed alternately in
Santa Clara, California Santa Clara ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "Clare of Assisi, Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities and towns i ...
, and
Hillsboro, Oregon Hillsboro ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon and is the county seat of Washington County, Oregon, Washington County. Situated in the Tualatin Valley on the west side of the Portland metropolitan area, the city hosts many High tech, high-te ...
. The Santa Clara design team embarked in 1993 on a successor to the
x86 architecture x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. T ...
, codenamed "P7". The first attempt was dropped a year later but quickly revived in a cooperative program with
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...
engineers, though Intel soon took over primary design responsibility. The resulting implementation of the
IA-64 IA-64 (Intel Itanium architecture) is the instruction set architecture (ISA) of the discontinued Itanium family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors. The basic ISA specification originated at Hewlett-Packard (HP), and was subsequently implemented by ...
64-bit architecture was the
Itanium Itanium (; ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit computing, 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). The Itanium architecture originated at Hewlett-Packard (HP), and was later jointly dev ...
, finally introduced in June 2001. The Itanium's performance running legacy x86 code did not meet expectations, and it failed to compete effectively with
x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...
, which was AMD's 64-bit extension of the 32-bit x86 architecture (Intel uses the name Intel 64, previously EM64T). In 2017, Intel announced that the Itanium 9700 series (Kittson) would be the last Itanium chips produced. The Hillsboro team designed the Willamette processors (initially code-named P68), which were marketed as the Pentium 4. During this period, Intel undertook two major supporting advertising campaigns. The first campaign, the 1991 "Intel Inside" marketing and branding campaign, is widely known and has become synonymous with Intel itself. The idea of "
ingredient branding In marketing, ingredient branding or ingredient marketing refers to a process in which a company markets an established ingredient or component used in its own products. The overall marketing strategy seeks to signal a high-quality product based on ...
" was new at the time, with only NutraSweet and a few others making attempts to do so. One of the key architects of the marketing team was the head of the microprocessor division, David House. He coined the slogan "Intel Inside". This campaign established Intel, which had been a component supplier little-known outside the PC industry, as a household name. The second campaign, Intel's Systems Group, which began in the early 1990s, showcased manufacturing of PC
motherboard A motherboard, also called a mainboard, a system board, a logic board, and informally a mobo (see #Nomenclature, "Nomenclature" section), is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It ho ...
s, the main board component of a personal computer, and the one into which the processor (CPU) and memory (RAM) chips are plugged. The Systems Group campaign was lesser known than the Intel Inside campaign. 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. During the 1990s, Intel Architecture Labs (IAL) was responsible for many of the hardware innovations for the PC, including the PCI Bus, the
PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a high-speed standard used to connect hardware components inside computers. It is designed to replace older expansion bus standards such as Peripher ...
(PCIe) bus, and
Universal Serial Bus Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...
(USB). 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 Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
. The competition between Intel and Microsoft was revealed in testimony by then IAL Vice-president Steven McGeady at the Microsoft antitrust trial (''United States v. Microsoft Corp.'').


Pentium flaw

In June 1994, Intel engineers discovered a flaw in the
floating-point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a Sign (mathematics), signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some Radix, base) multiplied by an integer power of that ba ...
math subsection of the P5 Pentium microprocessor. Under certain data-dependent conditions, the low-order bits of the result of a floating-point division would be incorrect. The error could compound in subsequent calculations. Intel corrected the error in a future chip revision, and under public pressure it issued a total recall and replaced the defective Pentium CPUs (which were limited to some 60, 66, 75, 90, and 100 MHz
models A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin , . Models can be divided int ...
) on customer request. The bug was discovered independently in October 1994 by Thomas Nicely, Professor of Mathematics at Lynchburg College. He contacted Intel but received no response. On October 30, he posted a message about his finding on the Internet. Word of the bug spread quickly and reached the industry press. The bug was easy to replicate; a user could enter specific numbers into the calculator on the operating system. Consequently, many users did not accept Intel's statements that the error was minor and "not even an erratum". During Thanksgiving, in 1994, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' ran a piece by journalist John Markoff spotlighting the error. Intel changed its position and offered to replace every chip, quickly putting in place a large end-user support organization. This resulted in a $475 million charge against Intel's 1994
revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of product (business), goods and services related to the primary operations of a business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some compan ...
. Nicely later learned that Intel had discovered the FDIV bug in its own testing a few months before him (but had decided not to inform customers). 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 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 a lasting negative impression.


Intel Core

The Intel Core line originated from the original Core brand, with the release of the 32-bit computing, 32-bit ''Yonah (microprocessor), Yonah'' CPU, Intel's first dual-core mobile (low-power) processor. Derived from the Pentium M, the processor family used an enhanced version of the P6 microarchitecture. Its successor, the Intel Core 2, Core 2 family, was released on July 27, 2006. This was based on the Intel Intel Core (microarchitecture), Core microarchitecture, and was a 64-bit design. Instead of focusing on higher clock rates, the Core microarchitecture emphasized power efficiency and a return to lower clock speeds. It also provided more efficient decoding stages, execution units, CPU cache, caches, and Bus (computing), buses, reducing the Electric energy consumption, power consumption of Core 2-branded CPUs while increasing their processing capacity. In November 2008, Intel released the 1st-generation Core processors based on the Nehalem (microarchitecture), Nehalem microarchitecture. Intel also introduced a new naming scheme, with the three variants now named Core i3, i5, and i7 (as well as i9 from 7th-generation onwards). Unlike the previous naming scheme, these names no longer correspond to specific technical features. It was succeeded by the Westmere (microarchitecture), Westmere microarchitecture in 2010, with a die shrink to 32 nm and included Intel HD Graphics. In 2011, Intel released the Sandy Bridge-based 2nd-generation Core processor family. This generation featured an 11% performance increase over Nehalem. It was succeeded by Ivy Bridge (microarchitecture), Ivy Bridge-based 3rd-generation Core, introduced at the 2012 Intel Developer Forum. Ivy Bridge featured a die shrink to 22 nm process, 22 nm, and supported both DDR3 memory and DDR3L chips. Intel continued its tick-tock model of a microarchitecture change followed by a die shrink until the 6th-generation Core family based on the Skylake microarchitecture. This model was deprecated in 2016, with the release of the 7th-generation Core family based on
Kaby Lake Kaby Lake is Intel's codename for its seventh generation Core microprocessor family announced on August 30, 2016. Like the preceding Skylake, Kaby Lake is produced using a 14 nanometer manufacturing process technology. Breaking with Intel's p ...
, ushering in the process–architecture–optimization model. From 2016 until 2021, Intel later released more optimizations on the Skylake microarchitecture with Kaby Lake, Kaby Lake R, Amber Lake (microarchitecture), Amber Lake, Whiskey Lake (microprocessor), Whiskey Lake, Coffee Lake, Coffee Lake Refresh, Coffee Lake R, and Comet Lake (microprocessor), Comet Lake. Intel struggled to shrink their process node from
14 nm The "14 nanometer process" refers to a marketing term for the MOSFET technology node that is the successor to the "22nm" (or "20nm") node. The "14nm" was so named by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS). Until about ...
to 10 nm, with the first microarchitecture under that node, Cannon Lake (marketed as 8th-generation Core), only being released in small quantities in 2018. In 2019, Intel released the 10th-generation of Core processors, codenamed "Amber Lake", "Comet Lake", and " Ice Lake". Ice Lake, based on the Sunny Cove microarchitecture, was produced on the 10 nm process and was limited to low-power mobile processors. Both Amber Lake and Comet Lake were based on a refined 14 nm node, with the latter being used for desktop and high-performance mobile products and the former used for low-power mobile products. In September 2020, 11th-generation Core mobile processors, codenamed Tiger Lake (microprocessor), Tiger Lake, were launched. Tiger Lake is based on the Willow Cove microarchitecture and a refined 10 nm node. Intel later released 11th-generation Core desktop processors (codenamed "Rocket Lake"), fabricated using Intel's 14 nm process and based on the Cypress Cove (microarchitecture), Cypress Cove microarchitecture, on March 30, 2021. It replaced Comet Lake desktop processors. All 11th-generation Core processors feature new integrated graphics based on the Intel Xe microarchitecture. Both desktop and mobile products were unified under a single process node with the release of 12th-generation Intel Core processors (codenamed "Alder Lake (microprocessor), Alder Lake") in late 2021. This generation will be fabricated using Intel's 10 nm process, called Intel 7, for both desktop and mobile processors, and is based on a Heterogeneous computing, hybrid architecture utilizing high-performance Golden Cove (microarchitecture), Golden Cove cores and high-efficiency Gracemont (microarchitecture), Gracemont (Atom) cores.


Transient execution CPU vulnerability


Use of Intel products by Apple Inc. (2005–2019)

On June 6, 2005,
Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...
, then CEO of
Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
, announced that Apple would be transitioning the
Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
from its long favored
PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...
architecture to the Intel x86 architecture because the future PowerPC road map was unable to satisfy Apple's needs. This was seen as a win for Intel, although 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. The first Mac computers containing Intel CPUs were announced on January 10, 2006, and Apple had its entire line of consumer Macs running on Intel processors by early August 2006. The Apple Xserve server was updated to Intel Xeon processors from November 2006 and was offered in a configuration similar to Apple's Mac Pro. Despite Apple's use of Intel products, relations between the two companies were strained at times. Rumors of Apple switching from Intel processors to their own designs began circulating as early as 2011. On June 22, 2020, during Apple's annual WWDC, Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, announced that it would be Mac transition to Apple silicon, transitioning the company's entire Mac line from Intel CPUs to Apple silicon, custom Apple-designed processors based on the Arm architecture over the course of the next two years. In the short term, this transition was estimated to have minimal effects on Intel, as Apple only accounted for 2% to 4% of its revenue. However, at the time it was believed that Apple's shift to its own chips might prompt other PC manufacturers to reassess their reliance on Intel and the x86 architecture. By November 2020, Apple unveiled the Apple M1, M1, its processor custom-designed for the Mac.


Solid-state drives (SSDs)

In 2008, Intel began shipping mainstream solid-state drives (SSDs) with up to 160 GB storage capacities.Intel Introduces Solid-State Drives for Notebook and Desktop Computers
. Intel (September 8, 2008). Retrieved July 8, 2011.
As with their CPUs, Intel develops SSD chips using ever-smaller nanometer processes. These SSDs make use of industry standards such as NAND flash, SATA#mSATA, mSATA,Intel's SSD 310: G2 Performance in an mSATA Form Factor
. AnandTech. Retrieved July 8, 2011.
PCIe, and NVM Express, NVMe. In 2017, Intel introduced SSDs based on 3D XPoint technology under the Optane brand name. In 2021, SK Hynix acquired most of Intel's NAND memory business for $7 billion, with a remaining transaction worth $2 billion expected in 2025. Intel also discontinued its consumer Optane products in 2021. In July 2022, Intel disclosed in its Q2 earnings report that it would cease future product development within its Optane business, which in turn effectively discontinued the development of 3D XPoint as a whole.


Supercomputers

The Intel Scientific Computers division was founded in 1984 by Justin Rattner, to design and produce parallel computing, parallel computers based on Intel microprocessors connected in hypercube internetwork topology. In 1992, the name was changed to the Intel Supercomputing Systems Division, and development of the iWarp architecture was also subsumed. The division designed several supercomputer systems, including the Intel iPSC/1, Intel iPSC/2, iPSC/2, Intel iPSC/860, iPSC/860, Intel Paragon, Paragon and ASCI Red. In November 2014, Intel stated that it was planning to use optical fibers to improve networking within supercomputers.


Fog computing

On November 19, 2015, Intel, alongside Arm Holdings, Arm, Dell, Cisco Systems,
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
, and Princeton University, founded the OpenFog Consortium, to promote interests and development in fog computing. Intel's Chief Strategist for the IoT Strategy and Technology Office, Jeff Fedders, became the consortium's first president.


Self-driving cars

Intel is one of the biggest stakeholders in the self-driving car industry, having joined the race in mid 2017 after joining forces with Mobileye. The company is also one of the first in the sector to research consumer acceptance, after an AAA report quoted a 78% nonacceptance rate of the technology in the U.S. Self-driving car#Levels of driving automation, Safety levels of autonomous driving technology, the thought of abandoning control to a machine, and psychological comfort of passengers in such situations were the major discussion topics initially. The commuters also stated that they did not want to see everything the car was doing. This was primarily a referral to the auto-steering wheel with no one sitting in the driving seat. Intel also learned that voice control regulator is vital, and the interface between the humans and machine eases the discomfort condition, and brings some sense of control back. It is important to mention that Intel included only 10 people in this study, which makes the study less credible. In a video posted on YouTube, Intel accepted this fact and called for further testing.


Programmable devices

Intel formed a new business unit called the Programmable Solutions Group (PSG) on completion of its
Altera Altera Corporation is a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015 before becoming independent once again in 2025 as a company focused on developm ...
acquisition. Intel has since sold Stratix, Arria, and Cyclone FPGAs. In 2019, Intel released Agilex FPGAs: chips aimed at data centers, 5G applications, and other uses. In October 2023, Intel announced it would be spinning off PSG into a separate company at the start of 2024, while maintaining majority ownership.


Competition, antitrust, and espionage

By the end of the 1990s,
microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...
performance had outstripped software demand for that CPU power. Aside from high-end server systems and software, whose demand dropped with the end of the "dot-com bubble", consumer systems ran effectively on increasingly low-cost systems after 2000. Intel's strategy was to develop processors with better performance in a short time, from the appearance of one to the other, as seen with the appearance of the Pentium II in May 1997, the Pentium III in February 1999, and the Pentium 4 in the fall of 2000, making the strategy ineffective since the consumer did not see the innovation as essential, and leaving an opportunity for rapid gains by competitors, notably
AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
. 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 the
x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...
microprocessor market led to numerous charges of antitrust violations over the years, including Federal Trade Commission, 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 x86 microprocessors) combined with Intel's own hardball legal tactics (such as its infamous 338 patent suit versus PC manufacturers) made it an attractive target for litigation, culminating in Intel agreeing to pay AMD $1.25 billion and grant them a perpetual patent cross-license in 2009 as well as several anti-trust judgements in Europe, Korea, and Japan. A case of industrial espionage arose in 1995 that involved both Intel and AMD. Bill Gaede, an Argentina, Argentine formerly employed both at AMD and at Intel's Chandler, Arizona, Arizona plant, was arrested for attempting in 1993 to sell the i486 and P5 Pentium designs to AMD and to certain foreign powers. Gaede videotaped data from his computer screen at Intel and mailed it to AMD, which immediately alerted Intel and authorities, resulting in Gaede's arrest. Gaede was convicted and sentenced to 33 months in prison in June 1996.


Industries


Operating segments

* Client Computing Group51.8% of 2020 revenuesproduces central processing unit, PC processors and related components. * Data Center Group33.7% of 2020 revenuesproduces hardware components used in server, network, and storage platforms. * Internet of Things Group5.2% of 2020 revenuesoffers platforms designed for retail, transportation, industrial, buildings and home use. * Programmable Solutions Group2.4% of 2020 revenuesmanufactures programmable semiconductors (primarily FPGAs).


Customers

In 2023, Dell accounted for about 19% of Intel's total revenues, Lenovo accounted for 11% of total revenues, and HP Inc. accounted for 10% of total revenues. As of May 2024, the United States Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense is another large customer for Intel. In September 2024, Intel reportedly qualified for as much as $3.5 billion in federal grants to make semiconductors for the Defense Department.


Market share

According to International Data Corporation, IDC, while Intel enjoyed the biggest market share in both the overall worldwide PC microprocessor market (73.3%) and the mobile PC microprocessor (80.4%) in the second quarter of 2011, the numbers decreased by 1.5% and 1.9% compared to the first quarter of 2011. Intel's market share decreased significantly in the Enthusiast computing, enthusiast market as of 2019, and they have faced delays for their 10 nm products. According to former Intel CEO Bob Swan, the delay was caused by the company's overly aggressive strategy for moving to its next node.


Historical market share

In the 1980s, Intel was among the world's top ten sellers of semiconductors (10th in 1987). Along with
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
, it was part of the "
Wintel Wintel (portmanteau of ''Windows'' and ''Intel'') is the partnership of Microsoft and Intel producing personal computers (PCs) using Intel x86-compatible processors running Windows. Background By the early 1980s, the chaos and incompatibility ...
" personal computer domination in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 1992, Intel became the List of largest semiconductor chip manufacturers, biggest semiconductor chip maker by revenue and held the position until 2018 when Samsung Electronics surpassed it, but Intel returned to its former position the year after. Other major semiconductor companies include
TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC or Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is one of the world's most valuable semiconductor companies, the world' ...
, GlobalFoundries,
Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...
, ASML Holding, ASML, STMicroelectronics, United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), Micron Technology, Micron, SK Hynix, Kioxia, and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, SMIC.


Major competitors

Intel's competitors in PC chipsets included
AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
, VIA Technologies, Silicon Integrated Systems, and
Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...
. Intel's competitors in networking include NXP Semiconductors, Infineon, Broadcom Limited,
Marvell Technology Group Marvell Technology, Inc. is an American company, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, which develops and produces semiconductors and related technology. Founded in 1995, the company had more than 6,500 employees as of 2024, with over 10,000 ...
and Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, and competitors in flash memory included Spansion, Samsung Electronics, Qimonda, Kioxia, STMicroelectronics, Micron Technology, Micron, SK Hynix, and
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
. The only major competitor in the
x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...
processor market is AMD, with which Intel has had full cross-licensing agreements since 1976: each partner can use the other's patented technological innovations without charge after a certain time. However, the cross-licensing agreement is canceled in the event of an AMD bankruptcy or takeover. Some smaller competitors, such as VIA Technologies, produce low-power electronics, low-power x86 processors for small factor computers and portable equipment. However, the advent of such mobile computing devices, in particular, smartphones, has led to Post-PC era, a decline in PC sales. Since over 95% of the world's smartphones currently use processors cores designed by Arm Holdings, Arm, using the ARM architecture family, Arm instruction set, Arm has become a major competitor for Intel's processor market. Arm is also planning to make attempts at setting foot into the PC and server market, with Ampere Computing, Ampere and
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
each individually designing CPUs for servers and supercomputers. The only other major competitor in processor instruction sets is RISC-V, which is an Open-source software, open source CPU instruction set. The major Chinese phone and telecommunications manufacturer Huawei has released chips based on the RISC-V instruction set due to United States sanctions against China, US sanctions against China. Intel has been involved in several disputes regarding the violation of competition law, antitrust laws, which are noted below.


Carbon footprint

Intel reported total Carbon footprint, CO2e emissions (direct + indirect) for the twelve months ending December 31, 2020, at 2,882 Kt (+94/+3.4% y-o-y).Alt URL
Intel plans to reduce carbon emissions 10% by 2030 from a 2020 base year and achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.


Manufacturing locations

Intel has self-reported that they have Wafer fabrication plants in the United States, Intel Ireland, Ireland, and Israel. They have also self-reported that they have assembly and testing sites mostly in China, Costa Rica, Malaysia, and Vietnam, and one site in the United States.


Corporate affairs


Business trends

The key trends for Intel are (as of the financial year ending in late December):


Leadership and corporate structure

Robert Noyce Robert Norton Noyce (December 12, 1927 – June 3, 1990), nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", was an American physicist and entrepreneur who co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel Corporation in 1968. He was also credited w ...
was Intel's CEO at its founding in 1968, followed by co-founder
Gordon Moore Gordon Earle Moore (January 3, 1929 – March 24, 2023) was an American businessman, engineer, and the co-founder and emeritus chairman of Intel Corporation. He proposed Moore's law which makes the observation that the number of transistors i ...
in 1975. Andy Grove became the company's president in 1979 and added the CEO title in 1987 when Moore became chairman. In 1998, Grove succeeded Moore as chairman, and Craig Barrett (Intel President), Craig Barrett, already company president, took over. On May 18, 2005, Barrett handed the reins of the company over to Paul Otellini, who had been the company president and COO and who was responsible for Intel's design win in the original
IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...
. The board of directors elected Otellini as president and CEO, and Barrett replaced Grove as Board of directors, Chairman of the Board. Grove stepped down as chairman but is retained as a special adviser. In May 2009, Barrett stepped down as chairman of the board and was succeeded by Jane Shaw. In May 2012, Intel vice chairman Andy Bryant, who had held the posts of CFO (1994) and Chief Administrative Officer (2007) at Intel, succeeded Shaw as executive chairman. In November 2012, president and CEO Paul Otellini announced that he would step down in May 2013 at the age of 62, three years before the company's mandatory retirement age. During a six-month transition period, Intel's board of directors commenced a search process for the next CEO, in which it considered both internal managers and external candidates such as Sanjay Jha (businessman), Sanjay Jha and Patrick Gelsinger. Financial results revealed that, under Otellini, Intel's revenue increased by 55.8% (US$34.2 to 53.3 billion), while its net income increased by 46.7% (US$7.5 billion to 11 billion). On May 2, 2013, Executive Vice President and COO Brian Krzanich was elected as Intel's sixth CEO, a selection that became effective on May 16, 2013, at the company's annual meeting. Reportedly, the board concluded that an insider could proceed with the role and exert an impact more quickly, without the need to learn Intel's processes, and Krzanich was selected on such a basis. Intel's software head Renée James was selected as president of the company, a role that is second to the CEO position. As of May 2013, Intel's board of directors consists of Andy Bryant, John Donahoe, Frank Yeary, Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, Susan Decker, Reed Hundt, Paul Otellini, James Plummer, David Pottruck, and David Yoffie and Creative director will.i.am. The board was described by former ''Financial Times'' journalist Tom Foremski as "an exemplary example of corporate governance of the highest order" and received a rating of ten from GovernanceMetrics International, a form of recognition that has only been awarded to twenty-one other corporate boards worldwide. On June 21, 2018, Intel announced the resignation of Brian Krzanich as CEO, with the exposure of a relationship he had with an employee. Robert H. Swan, Bob Swan was named interim CEO, as the Board began a search for a permanent CEO. On January 31, 2019, Swan transitioned from his role as CFO and interim CEO and was named by the Board as the seventh CEO to lead the company. On January 13, 2021, Intel announced that Swan would be replaced as CEO by Pat Gelsinger, effective February 15. Gelsinger is a former Intel chief technology officer who had previously been head of VMWare. In March 2021, Intel removed the mandatory retirement age for its corporate officers. In October 2023, Intel announced it would be spinning off its Programmable Solutions Group business unit into a separate company at the start of 2024, while maintaining majority ownership and intending to seek an IPO within three years to raise funds. On December 1, 2024, Pat Gelsinger retired from the position of Intel CEO and stepped down from the company’s board of directors. David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus were named as interim co-CEO's. On March 13, 2025, it was announced that he would be formally replaced by American Lip-Bu Tan starting March 18, 2025.


Ownership

The 10 largest shareholders of Intel as of December 2023 were: * Vanguard Group (9.12% of shares) * BlackRock (8.04%) * State Street Corporation, State Street (4.45%) * Capital Group Companies, Capital International (2.29%) * Geode Capital Management (2.01%) * PRIMECAP, Primecap (1.78%) * Capital Group Companies, Capital Research Global Investors (1.63%) * Morgan Stanley (1.18%) * Norges Bank (1.14%) * Northern Trust (1.05%)


Board of directors

: * Frank D. Yeary (chairman), managing member of Darwin Capital * Jim Goetz, James Goetz, managing director of Sequoia Capital * Andrea Goldsmith (engineer), Andrea Goldsmith, dean of engineering and applied science at Princeton University * Alyssa Henry, Square, Inc. executive * Omar Ishrak, chairman and former CEO of Medtronic * Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, former president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation * Tsu-Jae King Liu, professor at the UC Berkeley College of Engineering * Barbara G. Novick, co-founder of BlackRock * Gregory Smith, CFO of Boeing * Dion Weisler, former president and CEO of HP Inc. * Lip-Bu Tan, executive chairman of Cadence Design Systems


Employment

Prior to March 2021, Intel has a mandatory retirement policy for its CEOs when they reach age 65. Andy Grove retired at 62, while both Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore retired at 58. Grove retired as chairman and as a member of the board of directors in 2005 at age 68. Intel's headquarters are located in Santa Clara, California, and the company has List of Intel manufacturing sites, operations around the world. Its largest workforce concentration anywhere is in Washington County, Oregon (in the Portland metropolitan area's "Silicon Forest"), with 18,600 employees at several facilities. Outside the United States, the company has facilities in China, Costa Rica,
Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...
, Israel, Ireland, India, Russia, Argentina and Vietnam, in 63 countries and regions internationally. In March 2022, Intel stopped supplying the Russian market because of international sanctions during the Russo-Ukrainian War. In the U.S. Intel employs significant numbers of people in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Washington (state), Washington and Utah. In Oregon, Intel is the state's largest private employer.Suh, Elizabeth (October 28, 2007)
Home of Oregon's largest employer and much more.
''The Oregonian''.
The company is the largest industrial employer in New Mexico while in Arizona the company has 12,000 employees as of January 2020. Intel invests heavily in research in China and about 100 researchersor 10% of the total number of researchers from Intelare located in Beijing. In 2011, the Israeli government offered Intel $290 million to expand in the country. As a condition, Intel would employ 1,500 more workers in Kiryat Gat and between 600 and 1000 workers in the north. In January 2014, it was reported that Intel would cut about 5,000 jobs from its workforce of 107,000. The announcement was made a day after it reported earnings that missed analyst targets. In March 2014, it was reported that Intel would embark upon a $6 billion plan to expand its activities in Israel. The plan calls for continued investment in existing and new Intel plants until 2030. , Intel employs 10,000 workers at four development centers and two production plants in Israel. Due to declining PC sales, in 2016 Intel cut 12,000 jobs. In 2021, Intel reversed course under new CEO Pat Gelsinger and started hiring thousands of engineers.


Diversity

Intel has a Diversity Initiative, including employee diversity groups, as well as a supplier diversity program. 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 groups,. Intelglbt.org (July 16, 2008). Retrieved July 8, 2011. and supports a Muslim employees group, a Jewish employees group, and a Bible-based Christian group.Intel Bible-Based Christian Network (IBCN) website
. IBCN (April 8, 2011). Retrieved July 8, 2011.
Intel has received a 100% rating on numerous Corporate Equality Index, Corporate Equality Indices released by the Human Rights Campaign including the first one released in 2002. In addition, the company is frequently named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers by ''Working Mother'' magazine. In January 2015, Intel announced the investment of $300 million over the next five years to enhance gender and racial diversity in their own company as well as the technology industry as a whole.Intel to invest $300 million in tech, game diversity
. Graft, Kris. Gamasutra. January 7, 2015
Intel Announces $300 Million Tech Diversity Initiative
. Moscaritolo, Angela. ''PC Magazine''. January 7, 2015
Intel CEO Outlines Future of Computing
. Intel, January 6, 2015
Intel announces fund for greater tech diversity
. Kamen, Matt. Wired UK, January 7, 2015.
In February 2016, Intel released its Global Diversity & Inclusion 2015 Annual Report. The male-female mix of US employees was reported as 75.2% men and 24.8% women. For US employees in technical roles, the mix was reported as 79.8% male and 20.1% female. NPR reports that Intel is facing a retention problem (particularly for African Americans), not just a pipeline problem.


Economic impact in Oregon in 2009

In 2011, ECONorthwest conducted an economic impact analysis of Intel's economic contribution to the state of Oregon. The report found that in 2009 "the total economic impacts attributed to Intel's operations, capital spending, contributions and taxes amounted to almost $14.6 billion in activity, including $4.3 billion in personal income and 59,990 jobs". Through multiplier effects, every 10 Intel jobs supported, on average, was found to create 31 jobs in other sectors of the economy.


Supply chain

Intel has been addressing supply base reduction as an issue since the mid-1980's, adopting an "n + 1" rule of thumb, whereby the maximum number of suppliers required to maintain production levels for each component is determined, and no more than one additional supplier is engaged with for each component.


Intel Israel

Intel has been operating in the State of Israel since Dov Frohman founded the Israeli branch of the company in 1974 in a small office in Haifa. Intel Israel currently has development centers in Haifa,
Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
and Petah Tikva, and has a manufacturing plant in the Kiryat Gat industrial park that develops and manufactures microprocessors and communications products. Intel employed about 10,000 employees in Israel in 2013. Maxine Fesberg has been the CEO of Intel Israel since 2007 and the Vice President of Intel Global. In December 2016, Fesberg announced her resignation, her position of chief executive officer (CEO) has been filled by Yaniv Gerti since January 2017. In June 2024, the company announced that it was stopping development on a Kiryat Gat-based factory in Israel. The site was expected to cost $25 billion, with $3.2 billion provided by the Israeli government in the form of a grant.


Key acquisitions and investments (2010–present)

In 2010, Intel purchased McAfee, a manufacturer of computer security technology, for $7.68 billion. As a condition for regulatory approval of the transaction, Intel agreed to provide rival security firms with all necessary information that would allow their products to use Intel's chips and personal computers. After the acquisition, Intel had about 90,000 employees, including about 12,000 software engineers. In September 2016, Intel sold a majority stake in its computer-security unit to TPG Capital, reversing the five-year-old McAfee acquisition. In August 2010, Intel and Infineon Technologies announced that Intel would acquire Infineon's Wireless Solutions business. Intel planned to use Infineon's technology in laptops, smart phones, netbooks, tablets and embedded computers in consumer products, eventually integrating its wireless modem into Intel's silicon chips. In March 2011, Intel bought most of the assets of Cairo-based SySDSoft. In July 2011, Intel announced that it had agreed to acquire Fulcrum Microsystems Inc., a company specializing in network switches. The company used to be included on the EE Times list of 60 Emerging Startups. In October 2011, Intel reached a deal to acquire Telmap, an Israeli-based navigation software company. The purchase price was not disclosed, but Israeli media reported values around $300 million to $350 million. In July 2012, Intel agreed to buy 10% of the shares of ASML Holding NV for $2.1 billion and another $1 billion for 5% of the shares that need shareholder approval to fund relevant research and development efforts, as part of a EUR3.3 billion ($4.1 billion) deal to accelerate the development of 450-millimeter wafer technology and extreme ultra-violet lithography by as much as two years. In July 2013, Intel confirmed the acquisition of Omek Interactive, an Israeli company that makes technology for gesture-based interfaces, without disclosing the monetary value of the deal. An official statement from Intel read: "The acquisition of Omek Interactive will help increase Intel's capabilities in the delivery of more immersive perceptual computing experiences." One report estimated the value of the acquisition between US$30 million and $50 million. The acquisition of a Spanish natural language recognition startup, Indisys was announced in September 2013. The terms of the deal were not disclosed but an email from an Intel representative stated: "Intel has acquired Indisys, a privately held company based in Seville, Spain. The majority of Indisys employees joined Intel. We signed the agreement to acquire the company on May 31 and the deal has been completed." Indysis explains that its artificial intelligence (AI) technology "is a human image, which converses fluently and with common sense in multiple languages and also works in different platforms". In December 2014, Intel bought PasswordBox. In January 2015, Intel purchased a 30% stake in Vuzix, a smart glasses manufacturer. The deal was worth $24.8 million. In February 2015, Intel announced its agreement to purchase German network chipmaker Lantiq, to aid in its expansion of its range of chips in devices with Internet connection capability. In June 2015, Intel announced its agreement to purchase FPGA design company
Altera Altera Corporation is a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015 before becoming independent once again in 2025 as a company focused on developm ...
for $16.7 billion, in its largest acquisition to date. The acquisition completed in December 2015. In October 2015, Intel bought cognitive computing company Saffron Technology for an undisclosed price. In August 2016, Intel purchased deep-learning startup Nervana Systems for over $400 million. In December 2016, Intel acquired computer vision startup Movidius for an undisclosed price. In March 2017, Intel announced that they had agreed to purchase Mobileye, an Israeli developer of "autonomous driving" systems for US$15.3 billion. In June 2017, Intel Corporation announced an investment of over for its upcoming Research and Development (R&D) centre in Bangalore, India. In January 2019, Intel announced an investment of over $11 billion on a new Israeli chip plant, as told by the Israeli Finance Minister. In November 2021, Intel recruited some of the employees of the Centaur Technology division from VIA Technologies, a deal worth $125 million, and effectively acquiring the talent and know-how of their x86 division. VIA retained the x86 licence and associated patents, and its Zhaoxin CPU joint-venture continues. In December 2021, Intel said it will invest $7.1 billion to build a new chip-packaging and testing factory in Malaysia. The new investment will expand the operations of its Malaysian subsidiary across Penang and Kulim, creating more than 4,000 new Intel jobs and more than 5,000 local construction jobs. In December 2021, Intel announced its plan to take Mobileye automotive unit via an Initial public offering, IPO of newly issued stock in 2022, maintaining its majority ownership of the company. In February 2022, Intel agreed to acquire Israeli chip manufacturer Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion. In August 2023, Intel terminated the acquisition as it failed to obtain approval from State Administration for Market Regulation, Chinese regulators within the 18-month transaction deadline. In May 2022, Intel announced that they have acquired Finnish graphics technology firm Siru innovations. The firm founded by ex-AMD Qualcomm mobile GPU engineers, is focused on developing software and silicon building blocks for GPU's made by other companies and is set to join Intel's fledgling Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group. In May 2022, it was announced that Ericsson and Intel have pooled to launch a tech hub in California to focus on the research and development of cloud Radio access network, RAN technology. The hub focuses on improving Ericsson Cloud RAN and Intel technology, including improving energy efficiency and network performance, reducing time to market, and monetizing new business opportunities such as enterprise applications. In April 2024, Intel reached a definitive agreement to sell 51% of Altera to Silver Lake (investment firm), Silver Lake. With this sale and Silver Lake now owning a majority stake, Intel also announced the cancellation of the potential IPO being conducted for Altera.


Ultrabook fund (2011)

In 2011, Intel Capital announced a new fund to support startups working on technologies in line with the company's concept for next-generation notebooks. The company is setting aside a $300 million fund to be spent over the next three to four years in areas related to ultrabooks. Intel announced the ultrabook concept at Computex in 2011. The ultrabook is defined as a thin (less than 0.8 inches [~2 cm] thick) notebook that utilizes Intel processors and also incorporates tablet features such as a touch screen and long battery life. At the Intel Developers Forum in 2011, four Taiwan ODMs showed prototype ultrabooks that used Intel's Ivy Bridge chips. Intel plans to improve power consumption of its chips for ultrabooks, like new Ivy Bridge processors in 2013, which will only have 10W default thermal design power. Intel's goal for Ultrabook's price is below $1000; however, according to two presidents from Acer and Compaq, this goal will not be achieved if Intel does not lower the price of its chips.


Open source support

Intel has a significant participation in the Open-source software, open source communities since 1999. For example, in 2006 Intel released MIT license, MIT-licensed X.Org Server, X.org drivers for their integrated graphic cards of the i965 family of chipsets. Intel released FreeBSD drivers for some networking cards, available under a BSD-compatible license, which were also ported to OpenBSD. Binary firmware files for non-wireless Ethernet devices were also released under a BSD licence allowing Freely redistributable software, free redistribution. Intel ran the Moblin project until April 23, 2009, when they handed the project over to the Linux Foundation. Intel also runs the ''LessWatts.org'' campaigns. However, after the release of the wireless products called Intel Pro/Wireless 2100, 2200BG/2225BG/2915ABG and 3945ABG in 2005, Intel was criticized for not granting free redistribution rights for the firmware that must be included in the operating system for the wireless devices to operate. As a result of this, Intel became a target of campaigns to allow free operating systems to include binary firmware on terms acceptable to the free software movement, open source community. Linspire-Linux creator Michael Robertson (businessman), Michael Robertson outlined the difficult position that Intel was in releasing to Open-source model, open source, as Intel did not want to upset their large customer
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
. Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD also claimed that Intel is being "an Open Source fraud" after an Intel employee presented a distorted view of the situation at an open source conference. In spite of the significant negative attention Intel received as a result of the wireless dealings, the binary firmware still has not gained a license compatible with free software principles. Intel has also supported other open source projects such as Blender (software), Blender and Open 3D Engine.


Corporate identity


Logo

Throughout its history, Intel has had three logos. The first Intel logo, introduced in April 1969, featured the company's name stylized in all lowercase, with the letter "e" dropped below the other letters. The second logo, introduced on January 3, 2006, was inspired by the "Intel Inside" campaign, featuring a swirl around the Intel brand name. The third logo, introduced on September 2, 2020, was inspired by the previous logos. It removes the swirl, redesign the style of the letters to form a refined symmetry, balance, and proportion. The dot on the "i" is the new visual identity, represents the potential and power of their processor.


Intel Inside

Intel has become one of the world's most recognizable computer brands following its long-running ''Intel Inside'' advertising campaign, campaign. The idea for "Intel Inside" came out of a meeting between Intel and one of the major computer resellers, MicroAge.Ronald J. Mion, former Vice President of Marketing (2/88-7/89), MicroAge, cited February 2016 In the late 1980s, Intel's market share was being seriously eroded by upstart competitors such as
AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
, Zilog, and others who had started to sell their less expensive microprocessors to computer manufacturers. This was because, by using cheaper processors, manufacturers could make cheaper computers and gain more market share in an increasingly price-sensitive market. In 1989, Intel's Dennis Carter visited MicroAge's headquarters in Tempe, Arizona, to meet with MicroAge's VP of Marketing, Ron Mion. MicroAge had become one of the largest distributors of Compaq, IBM, HP, and others and thus was a primaryalthough indirectdriver of demand for microprocessors. Intel wanted MicroAge to petition its computer suppliers to favor Intel chips. However, Mion felt that the marketplace should decide which processors they wanted. Intel's counterargument was that it would be too difficult to educate PC buyers on why Intel microprocessors were worth paying more for. Mion felt that the public did not really need to fully understand why Intel chips were better, they just needed to feel they were better. So Mion proposed a market test. Intel would pay for a MicroAge billboard somewhere saying, "If you're buying a personal computer, make sure it has Intel inside." In turn, MicroAge would put "Intel Inside" stickers on the Intel-based computers in their stores in that area. To make the test easier to monitor, Mion decided to do the test in Boulder, Colorado, where it had a single store. Virtually overnight, the sales of personal computers in that store dramatically shifted to Intel-based PCs. Intel very quickly adopted "Intel Inside" as its primary branding and rolled it out worldwide. As is often the case with computer lore, other tidbits have been combined to explain how things evolved. "Intel Inside" has not escaped that tendency and there are other "explanations" that had been floating around. Intel's branding campaign started with "The Computer Inside" tagline in 1990 in the U.S. and Europe. The Japan chapter of Intel proposed an "Intel in it" tagline and kicked off the Japanese campaign by hosting EKI-KON (meaning "Station Concert" in Japanese) at the Tokyo railway station dome on Christmas Day, December 25, 1990. Several months later, "The Computer Inside" incorporated the Japan idea to become "Intel Inside" which eventually elevated to the worldwide branding campaign in 1991, by Intel marketing manager Dennis Carter. A case study, "Inside Intel Inside", was put together by Harvard Business School. The five-note jingle was introduced in 1994 and by its tenth anniversary was being heard in 130 countries around the world. The initial branding agency for the "Intel Inside" campaign was DahlinSmithWhite Advertising of Salt Lake City. The Intel ''swirl'' logo was the work of DahlinSmithWhite art director Steve Grigg under the direction of Intel president and CEO Andy Grove. The ''Intel Inside'' advertising campaign sought public brand loyalty and awareness of Intel processors in consumer computers. Intel paid some of the advertiser's costs for an ad that used the ''Intel Inside'' logo and xylo-marimba jingle. In 2008, Intel planned to shift the emphasis of its Intel Inside campaign from traditional media such as television and print to newer media such as the Internet. Intel required that a minimum of 35% of the money it provided to the companies in its co-op program be used for online marketing. The Intel 2010 annual financial report indicated that $1.8 billion (6% of the gross margin and nearly 16% of the total net income) was allocated to all advertising with Intel Inside being part of that. In April 2025, chief marketing officer Brett Hannath announced a new marketing campaign—"That's the power of Intel Inside"—to highlight the usage of Intel products across different markets and industries.


Intel jingle

The D–D–G–D–A xylophone/marimba jingle, known as the "Intel Spiral" or "Intel Bong", used in Intel advertising was produced by Musikvergnuegen and written by Walter Werzowa, once a member of the Austrian 1980s sampling band Edelweiss (band), Edelweiss. The Intel jingle was made in 1994 to coincide with the launch of the Pentium. It was modified in 1999 to coincide with the launch of the Pentium III, although it overlapped with the 1994 version which was phased out in 2004. Advertisements for products featuring Intel processors with prominent MMX branding featured a version of the jingle with an embellishment (shining sound) after the final note. The jingle was remade a second time in 2004 to coincide with the new logo change. Again, it overlapped with the 1999 version and was not mainstreamed until the launch of the Core processors in 2006, with the melody unchanged. Another remake of the jingle debuted with Intel's new visual identity. The company has made use of numerous variants since its rebranding in 2020 (while retaining the mainstream 2006 version). In 2017, the United States Copyright Office registered a copyright claim to the 1994 sound recording of the "Intel Spiral", as it "contained a perceptible and sufficient amount of creative production authorship." However, registration was refused for the underlying musical composition, a perfect octave followed by a four-note arpeggio, as it was below the threshold of originality.


Processor naming strategy

In 2006, Intel expanded its promotion of open specification platforms beyond Centrino, to include the Intel Viiv, 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 and was done to comply with 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 IBM and AMD). They phased out the Pentium names from mobile processors first, when the new Yonah (microprocessor), Yonah chips, branded Intel Core, 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, Intel has maintained only the Celeron brand, the Atom brand for netbooks and the vPro lineup for businesses. Since late 2009, Intel's mainstream processors have been called Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 in order of performance from lowest to highest. The 1st-generation Core products carry a 3 digit name, such as i5-750, and the 2nd-generation products carry a 4 digit name, such as the i5-2500, and from 10th-generation onwards, Intel processors will have a 5 digit name, such as i9-10900K for desktop. In all cases, a 'K' at the end of it shows that it is an unlocked processor, enabling additional overclocking abilities (for instance, 2500K). vPro products will carry the Intel Core i7 vPro processor or the Intel Core i5 vPro processor name. In October 2011, Intel started to sell its Core i7-2700K "Sandy Bridge" chip to customers worldwide. Since 2010, "Centrino" is only being applied to Intel's WiMAX and Wi-Fi technologies. In 2022, Intel announced that they are dropping the Pentium and Celeron naming schemes for their desktop and laptop entry level processors. The "Intel Processor" branding will be replacing the old Pentium and Celeron naming schemes starting in 2023. In 2023, Intel announced that they will be dropping the 'i' in their future processor markings. For example, products such as Core i7, will now be called Core 7. Ultra will be added to the endings of processors that are in the higher end, such as Core Ultra 7.


Typography

Neo Sans Intel is a customized version of Neo Sans based on the Neo Sans and Neo Tech, designed by Sebastian Lester in 2004. It was introduced alongside Intel's rebranding in 2006. Previously, Intel used Helvetica as its standard typeface in corporate marketing. Intel Clear is a global font announced in 2014 designed for to be used across all communications. The font family was designed by Red Peek Branding and Dalton Maag. Initially available in Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts, it replaced Neo Sans Intel as the company's corporate typeface. Intel Clear Hebrew, Intel Clear Arabic were added by Dalton Maag Ltd. Neo Sans Intel remained in logo and to mark processor type and socket on the packaging of Intel's processors. In 2020, as part of a new visual identity, a new typeface, Intel One, was designed. It replaced Intel Clear as the font used by the company in most of its branding, however, it is used alongside Intel Clear typeface. In logo, it replaced Neo Sans Intel typeface. However, it is still used to mark processor type and socket on the packaging of Intel's processors.


Intel Brand Book

Intel Brand Book is a book produced by Red Peak Branding as part of Intel's new brand identity campaign, celebrating the company's achievements while setting the new standard for what Intel looks, feels and sounds like.


Charity

In November 2014, Intel designed a Paddington Bear statue—themed "Little Bear Blue"—one of fifty statues created by various celebrities and companies which were located around London. Created prior to the release of the film ''Paddington (film), Paddington'', the Intel-designed statue was located outside Framestore in Chancery Lane, London, a British visual-effects company which uses Intel technology for films including ''Paddington''. The statues were then auctioned to raise funds for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).


Sponsorships

Intel sponsors the Intel Extreme Masters, a series of international esports tournaments. It was also a sponsor for the Formula 1 teams BMW in Formula One, BMW Sauber and Scuderia Ferrari together with
AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
, AT&T, Pernod Ricard, Diageo and Vodafone. In 2013, Intel became a sponsor of FC Barcelona. In 2017, Intel became a sponsor of the Olympic Games, lasting from the 2018 Winter Olympics to the 2024 Summer Olympics. In 2024, Intel and Riot Games had an annual sponsorship valued at US$5 million, and one with JD Gaming for US$3.3 million. The company also had a sponsorship with Global Esports Federation, Global Esports.


Litigations and regulatory disputes


Patent infringement litigation (2006–2007)

In October 2006, Transmeta filed Transmeta#Lawsuit against Intel Corporation, a lawsuit against Intel for patent infringement on computer architecture and power efficiency technologies. The lawsuit was settled in October 2007, with Intel agreeing to pay US$150 million initially and US$20 million per year for the next five years. Both companies agreed to drop lawsuits against each other, while Intel was granted a perpetual non-exclusive license to use current and future patented Transmeta technologies in its chips for 10 years.


Antitrust allegations and litigation (2005–2023)

In September 2005, Intel filed a response to an AMD lawsuit, disputing AMD's claims, and claiming that Intel's business practices are fair and lawful. In a rebuttal, Intel deconstructed AMD's offensive strategy and argued that AMD struggled largely as a result of its own bad business decisions, including underinvestment in essential manufacturing capacity and excessive reliance on contracting out chip foundries. Legal analysts predicted the lawsuit would drag on for a number of years, since Intel's initial response indicated its unwillingness to settle with AMD. In 2008, a court date was finally set. On November 4, 2009, New York's attorney general filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel Corp, claiming the company used "illegal threats and collusion" to dominate the market for computer microprocessors. On November 12, 2009, AMD agreed to drop the antitrust lawsuit against Intel in exchange for $1.25 billion. A joint press release published by the two chip makers stated "While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development." An antitrust lawsuit and a Class action, class-action suit relating to cold calling employees of other companies has been settled.


Allegations by Japan Fair Trade Commission (2005)

In 2005, the local Fair Trade Commission (Japan), Fair Trade Commission found that Intel violated the Antimonopoly Act (Japan), Japanese Antimonopoly Act. The commission ordered Intel to eliminate discounts that had discriminated against AMD. To avoid a trial, Intel agreed to comply with the order.


Allegations by regulators in South Korea (2007)

In September 2007, South Korean regulators accused Intel of breaking antitrust law. The investigation began in February 2006, when officials raided Intel's South Korean offices. The company risked a penalty of up to 3% of its annual sales if found guilty. In June 2008, the Fair Trade Commission ordered Intel to pay a fine of US$25.5 million for taking advantage of its dominant position to offer incentives to major Korean PC manufacturers on the condition of not buying products from AMD.


Allegations by regulators in the United States (2008–2010)

New York started an investigation of Intel in January 2008 on whether the company violated antitrust laws in pricing and sales of its microprocessors. In June 2008, the Federal Trade Commission also began an antitrust investigation of the case. In December 2009, the FTC announced it would initiate an administrative proceeding against Intel in September 2010. In November 2009, following a two-year investigation, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sued Intel, accusing them of bribery and coercion, claiming that Intel bribed computer makers to buy more of their chips than those of their rivals and threatened to withdraw these payments if the computer makers were perceived as working too closely with its competitors. Intel has denied these claims. On July 22, 2010, Dell agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to pay $100 million in penalties resulting from charges that Dell did not accurately Corporation#Financial disclosure, disclose accounting information to investors. In particular, the SEC charged that from 2002 to 2006, Dell had an agreement with Intel to receive rebates in exchange for not using chips manufactured by AMD. These substantial rebates were not disclosed to investors, but were used to help meet investor expectations regarding the company's financial performance; "These exclusivity payments grew from 10% of Dell's operating income in FY 2003 to 38% in FY 2006, and peaked at 76% in the first quarter of FY 2007." Dell eventually did adopt AMD as a secondary supplier in 2006, and Intel subsequently stopped their rebates, causing Dell's financial performance to fall.


Allegations by the European Union (2007–2023)

In July 2007, the European Commission accused Intel of anti-competitive practices, mostly against
AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...
. The allegations, going back to 2003, include giving preferential prices to computer makers buying most or all of their microprocessor, chips from Intel, paying computer makers to delay or cancel the launch of products using AMD chips, and providing chips at below standard cost to governments and educational institutions. Intel responded that the allegations were unfounded and instead qualified its market behavior as consumer-friendly. General counsel Bruce Sewell responded that the commission had misunderstood some factual assumptions regarding pricing and manufacturing costs. In February 2008, Intel announced that its office in Munich had been raided by European Union regulators. Intel reported that it was cooperating with investigators. Intel faced a fine of up to 10% of its annual revenue if found guilty of stifling competition. AMD subsequently launched a website promoting these allegations. In June 2008, the EU filed new charges against Intel. In May 2009, the EU found that Intel had engaged in anti-competitive practices and subsequently fined Intel €1.06 billion (US$1.44 billion), a record amount. Intel was found to have paid companies, including Acer Inc., Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, HP, Lenovo and NEC, to exclusively use Intel chips in their products, and therefore harmed other, less successful companies including AMD. The European Commission said that Intel had deliberately acted to keep competitors out of the computer chip market and in doing so had made a "serious and sustained violation of the EU's antitrust rules". In addition to the fine, Intel was ordered by the commission to immediately cease all illegal practices. Intel has said that they will appeal against the commission's verdict. In June 2014, the General Court, which sits below the European Court of Justice, rejected the appeal. In 2022 the €1.06 billion fine was dropped, but was successively re-imposed in September 2023 as a €376.36 million fine.


Corporate responsibility record

Intel has been accused by some residents of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, of allowing Volatile organic compound, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to be released in excess of their pollution permit. One resident claimed that a release of 1.4 tons of carbon tetrachloride was measured from one acid scrubber during the fourth quarter of 2003 but an emission factor allowed Intel to report no carbon tetrachloride emissions for all of 2003. Another resident alleges that Intel was responsible for the release of other VOCs from their Rio Rancho site and that a necropsy of lung tissue from two deceased dogs in the area indicated trace amounts of toluene, hexane, ethylbenzene, and xylene isomers, all of which are solvents used in industrial settings but also commonly found in gasoline, retail paint thinners and retail solvents. During a sub-committee meeting of the New Mexico Environment Improvement Board, a resident claimed that Intel's own reports documented more than of VOCs were released in June and July 2006. Intel's environmental performance is published annually in their corporate responsibility report.


Conflict-free production

In 2009, Intel announced that it planned to undertake an effort to remove conflict resources—materials sourced from mines whose profits are used to fund armed militant groups, particularly within the Democratic Republic of the Congo—from its supply chain. Intel sought conflict-free sources of the precious metals common to electronics from within the country, using a system of first- and third-party audits, as well as input from the Enough Project and other organizations. During a keynote address at Consumer Electronics Show 2014, Intel CEO at the time, Brian Krzanich, announced that the company's microprocessors would henceforth be conflict free. In 2016, Intel stated that it had expected its entire supply chain to be conflict-free by the end of the year. In its 2012 rankings on the progress of consumer electronics companies relating to conflict minerals, the Enough Project rated Intel the best of 24 companies, calling it a "Pioneer of progress". In 2014, chief executive Brian Krzanich urged the rest of the industry to follow Intel's lead by also shunning conflict minerals.


Age discrimination complaints

Intel has faced complaints of age discrimination in firing and layoffs. Intel was sued in 1993 by nine former employees, over allegations that they were laid off because they were over the age of 40. A group called FACE Intel (Former and Current Employees of Intel) claims that Intel weeds out older employees. FACE Intel claims that more than 90% of people who have been laid off or fired from Intel are over the age of 40. ''Upside (magazine), Upside'' magazine requested data from Intel breaking out its hiring and firing by age, but the company declined to provide any.Alster, Norm, (December 7, 1998)
"Techies complain of age biases"
, ''Upside Magazine''. Retrieved July 8, 2011.
Intel has denied that age plays any role in Intel's employment practices. FACE Intel was founded by Ken Hamidi, who was fired from Intel in 1995 at the age of 47. Hamidi was blocked in a 1999 court decision from using Intel's email system to distribute criticism of the company to employees, which overturned in 2003 in Intel Corp. v. Hamidi.


Tax dispute in India

In August 2016, Indian officials of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) parked garbage trucks on Intel's campus and threatened to dump them for evading payment of property taxes between 2007 and 2008, to the tune of . Intel had reportedly been paying taxes as a non-air-conditioned office, when the campus in fact had central air conditioning. Other factors, such as land acquisition and construction improvements, added to the tax burden. Previously, Intel had appealed the demand in the Karnataka high court in July, during which the court ordered Intel to pay BBMP half the owed amount of plus arrears by August 28 of that year.


Hardware instability lawsuit

In November 2024, a group of Intel customers who had purchased the company's Raptor Lake CPUs filed a class-action lawsuit against Intel, alleging that the company was aware of instability issues affecting 13th and 14th generation Raptor Lake CPUs that the company failed to disclose to customers.


Product issues


Recalls


Pentium FDIV bug


Security vulnerabilities


Transient execution CPU vulnerability


Instability issues


Raptor Lake


See also

* 5 nm process * ASCI Red * Bumpless Build-up Layer * Comparison of ATI graphics processing units * Comparison of Intel processors * Comparison of Nvidia graphics processing units * Cyrix * Engineering sample (CPU) * Graphics processing unit (GPU) * Intel Developer Zone (Intel DZ) * Intel Driver Update Utility * Intel GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) * Intel HD and Iris Graphics * Intel Level Up * Intel Loihi * Intel Museum * Intel Science Talent Search * List of Intel chipsets * List of Intel CPU microarchitectures * List of Intel manufacturing sites * List of mergers and acquisitions by Intel * List of semiconductor fabrication plants * Intel Management Engine


References


External links

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