Intel Corporation

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ symbol: INTC) is the world’s largest manufacturer of semiconductors or “computer chips.” The company was founded in 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore (see chip and Moore, Gordon).

Until the early 1980s Intel made most of its revenue from manufacturing SRAM memory chips (see memory). When the Japanese had made significant inroads into the semiconductor market, Intel turned to microprocessors, which it had introduced in 1971 and which formed the basis for the development of the desktop or personal com-puter (see microprocessor and personal computer). During the 1980s, Intel 8086/8088 processors and their successors (286, 386, 486) and the associated chipsets were being used in the dominant “Wintel” (Microsoft Windows plus Intel) PC architecture. By the middle of the 1990s, Intel dominated the microprocessor market with its Pen-tium series chips, overcoming a mathematical flaw in some of the latter.

Competition

Around 2000, Intel’s dominance began to be challenged. The power of modern processors allowed for the develop-ment of lower-cost commodity PCs, and when Intel contin-ued its progression toward increased power, competitors, particularly AMD (see Advanced Micro Devices), were able to gain greater market share with its less expensive CPUs.

In higher power chips (particularly dual- and multi-core chips with more than one processor), Intel seems to have the edge in the middle of the first decade of the new cen-tury, although AMD is coming on strong. Meanwhile Intel and Apple in 2006 made a deal to replace the PowerPC chip in the Macintosh with Intel chips.

Intel has struggled with corporate reorganization and lower sales of chipsets and motherboards (even while con-tinuing with strong sales of its dual-core and quad-core processors). After a decline of 42 percent from 2005 to 2006, Intel’s net income increased to about $7 billion in 2007. However, its workforce has continued to decline from 102,500 in mid-2006 to 86,300 in 2007. However, Intel is expecting to produce more quad-core processors, new laptop components (including flash memory instead of hard drives), and other innovations in a very competi-tive market.