Facts About Intel : Must Read

The world's largest manufacturer of computer chips. Although it has been challenged in recent years by newcomers AMD and Cyrix, Intel still dominates the market for PC microprocessors. Nearly all PCs are based on Intel's x86 architecture.

Intel was founded in 1968 by Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore. Strategically, it is closely allied with Microsoft because the Windows 3.x and 95 operating systems are designed for x86 microprocessors.The popularity of Windows creates a demand for Intel or Intel-compatible microprocessors.Many people refer to this alliance as Wintel (short for Windows-Intel).

Amazing Facts About Intel | True Facts About Intel |Interesting Facts About Intel

• The name Intel is derived from "INTegrated ELectronics," but they had to pay a hotel chain $15,000 for exclusive use of the name.

• Intel was founded in  the year on July 18 ,1968 by physicist Robert Noyce and chemist Gordon Moore. They had previously worked together at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory and then Fairchild Semiconductor.

• The Headquarters of  Intel is at Santa Clara, California, United States.

• The company creates mother board chips, integrated circuits, graphic chips, embedded processors and many other computer based hardware products.
• Intel's first year revenues: $2,672.

• Robert Noyce is nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley," was known as a daredevil who heli-skied.
• Noyce shares credit with Jack Kilby for inventing the integrated circuit, aka the microchip.
• Intel's initial name, "Moore Noyce" was scrapped, allegedly because it sounded a too much like "more noise."

• Moore's law, is named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore. The law states that the number of transistors afford-ably placed on a microchip will double every two years.
• An estimated 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 transistors were shipped annually by 2003, about 100 times the world's ant population.

• The price of a single transistor on a chip is about the cost of a single printed newspaper character.

• The so-called Wintel alliance with Microsoft - the Windows in Wintel - helped make Intel a global power.

• Intel has held the number one spot in market share for semiconductor manufacturing since 1991. 

• In 2009, it had 14.2 percent of the market, double the 7.2 percent held by second-place Samsung Electronics.

•  In 2009 Intel was ranked the 23rd most powerful brand in the world.
  Moore is known for donating millions to environmental and educational causes 
• Noyce mentored many other tech upstarts, among them Steve Jobs 
• Intel also works with car security systems and high-bandwidth digital content protection.

• The company’s first product was the 3101 Schottky TTL bipolar 64-bit static RAM.
• Intel's first big success came in 1971 with the Intel 4004 microprocessor. The  4004 offered the same computing firepower as the room-sized ENIAC, the first ever computer introduced in 1946.
• The four-bit CPU contained 2,300 transistors.
• Ten years later, the 8088 CPU was included in the first personal computer released by IBM.
• That was the first time IBM had ever used an outside vendor to create a key microprocessor for one of its machines .

• The 8088 had 29,000 transistors.
• The current Core2Duo processor has 100,000 times the number of transistors of the 4004 and 10,000 times the number in the 8088.
• Thank Intel's founders for popularizing office cubicles, a staple of early corporate culture.
• Current CEO Paul Otellini sits in a cubicle

• The cleanroom of a semiconductor chip fabrication plant is thousands of times cleaner than the typical hospital room

• Air in a cleanroom has no particles measuring thicker than 0.5 micron across. A human hair is about 100 microns

• "Bunny suits" are the specialized outfits worn by cleanroom technicians to protect chips from contamination.

• The monorail systems used to transport silicon wafers in an Intel cleanroom have up to three miles of track. 

• Intel maintains a 10,000-square-foot museum dedicated to its 40-year history.
• Around 80,000 people a year visit the Intel Museum.
• Intel spent $5.7 billion on R&D in 2008
• Intel Capital has invested $9 billion in 1,000 companies since 1991, and will spend $3.5 billion more over the next two years.

• Intel refers to its non-stop, iterative process of developing processor microarchitecture as the "tick-tock" model.
• The first year is the "tick" phase, focusing on new process technology and refining the existing microarchitecure

• The second year is the "tock" phase, where the goal is to deliver a brand new microarchitecure.

• The New York Attorney General announced in 2009 an antitrust case against Intel, claiming "illegal threats and collusion." 

• The x86 microprocessors that are found on almost all personal computers everywhere were invented by the Intel Corporation.

• Intel acquired McAfee in the year 2010 with a deal that was valued at a little less than $8 billion.Other Intel acquisitions include Infineon’s Wireless Solutions, SySDSoft and Fulcrum Microsystems Inc.

• 55 percent of employees who work for Intel reside in the U.S.A

As of 2013, it is the global leader in semiconductor chip production and is valued at the highest, based on its overall income.