Vijftig jaar onrust bij Intel

On July 18, 1968, an electronics company named Moore Noyce was quietly born in California, USA.

The company was founded by two engineers, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore.

noyce and moore

Although they are electronic engineers, they have a very bright reputation in their profession. For example, Gordon Moore, I believe that even now, we will feel familiar. That’s right, this Gordon Moore is the same Moore who discovered Moore’s Law.

Moore’s Law: When prices remain unchanged, the number of components that can be accommodated on an integrated circuit will double approximately every 18-24 months, and the functionality will also double.

In fact, Robert Noyce was more famous than Moore at the time. At that time, Noyce was the “leading brother” among the eight Silicon Valley wizards who were denounced by William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor, as “betraying the Gang of Eight.” And Moore is one of the remaining seven younger brothers.

Betrayal of the Gang of Eight

After the “Gang of Eight” group rebelled against Shockley, they jointly founded Fairchild Semiconductor, the most legendary company in Silicon Valley. (For this history, please refer to: The Legend of Fairy Child)

Fairchild Semiconductor

However, 11 years later, these eight Fairchild founders resigned one after another because they were tired of the control and constraints of investors. Therefore, there is Moore Noyce Electronics, which the article originally mentioned.

Not long after the company was founded, the two founders discovered that the name Moore Noyce sounded like More Noise (more noise), which was not pleasant. So, they decided to change their name. They thought of the English word Intelligence, which is very similar to Integrated Electronics. Therefore, they decided to change the company name to Intel.

That’s right, it’s the current American chip giant, the world’s largest PC and server CPU manufacturer, Intel Corporation.

The headquarters building behind is named after Robert Noyce

Just last Wednesday, it happened to be the 50th anniversary of the birth of this company (1968.7.18~2018.7.18).

Drone light show at Intel 50th anniversary celebration

In the long history of mankind, many companies have been born. Among these companies, those who are qualified to call them great are the best. But there is no doubt that Intel can occupy one of the spots.

For many of us, Intel is synonymous with PC hardware. The “Wintel Alliance” formed by it and Microsoft has almost monopolized our knowledge of personal computers for a long time.

Windows Intel = Wintel

Intel not only launched many classic products and created many industry firsts, but also promoted the popularization of information technology and led the global computer and Internet revolution.

Let us continue to go back 50 years ago.

After the establishment of Intel, the first business operation was memory. The reason for choosing this direction lies in Moore’s opinion.

In the early days, the industry used magnetic coil memory. Although the principle of this kind of memory is simple, the process is very complex, it is difficult to produce by machine, and it requires manual production. As a result, the quality of the product is not very good and the volume is very large.

Moore thought that using the triode principle to make memories would definitely create better products.

Moore and Noyce investigate their own products

Therefore, Intel takes memory as its entrepreneurial direction.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for Intel to produce a new memory product-64K bipolar static random access memory (SRAM), code-named 3101. This product has a larger storage capacity than magnetic coil memory, but is much smaller in size, and its production cost is also much lower.

Intel 3101

After the product was introduced to the market, it quickly became a hot seller due to its high quality and low price, helping Intel achieve profitability in the second year of its establishment.

Need to mention, in this year, 1969, another company was quietly established. The founder of this company is also from Fairchild Semiconductor and previously served as the director of sales, named Jerry Sanders. The name of this company is AMD (Advanced Micro Semiconductor).

Jerry Sanders

Although Intel’s 3101 was successful, the good times did not last long. More semiconductor companies began to emerge, competition became more and more fierce, Intel’s proportion began to decline, and revenue also encountered a bottleneck.

Therefore, Intel was forced to quickly develop new product lines and expand into the microprocessor market.

In 1971, Intel developed the world’s first commercial processor, the Intel 4004. This processor integrates 2250 transistors on the chip, can process 4bit data, operates 60,000 times per second, and has a frequency of 108KHZ.

Intel 4004

Since then, the microprocessor era has begun.

In 1974, Intel launched the Intel 8080, which was 20 times more powerful than the 4004.

Intel 8080

The Alltair 8800, which uses the 8080 processor, is one of the earliest types of personal computers. And it was this computer that brought Bill Gates into the car.

However, in the following years, under the increasing competitive pressure, Intel’s development encountered unprecedented difficulties. In this case, Moore replaced Noyce and became CEO.

At the same time, another legend stepped forward and took on the important task of rescuing Intel.

He is a generation of management masters – Andy Grove.

Andy Grove

Grove was born in Hungary to a Jew who was abused by the Nazis and later immigrated to the United States. As early as Fairchild, Grove had followed Moore and the others and was Moore’s student and assistant.

Silk Grove

Compared with Noyce’s rough style, Grove’s management level is significantly more sophisticated and methodical. With Grove’s efforts, Intel gradually stabilized its position.

Grove, Noyce, Moore

In 1978, Intel produced the famous 16-bit 8086 processor. This processor has a special meaning. It is the first x86 processor in history and will become the standard platform for personal computers in the future.

Intel 8086

In 1981, IBM, the industry leader at the time, chose Intel’s 8086 instead of using self-developed chips in order to quickly launch PC products. As a result, Intel gained huge development opportunities and rapidly expanded its market share.

IBM’s first personal computer – 5150

However, in order to become a partner of IBM, Intel also paid a price. It had to agree to another additional condition, that is, it must be authorized to AMD, allowing it to become the second supplier of 8086 chips. Moreover, it is necessary to open up one’s own plans and codes to AMD.

For AMD, this is like a pie falling from the sky, and it’s a huge one.

Although AMD was born at about the same time as Intel, founder Sanders came from a sales background, and the company’s technical strength obviously cannot be compared with Intel, which has cutting-edge engineers like Moore and Noyce. For a long time, AMD could only rely on its imitation capabilities and lower prices to gain some market share, and its life was very difficult.

In any case, God favored AMD. Through IBM’s well-intentioned “facilitation”, AMD has embraced Intel’s lap. In this way, AMD not only survived, but also accelerated its development and accumulated the capital to compete with Intel in the future.

In fact, Intel was not stupid at the time. It also knew that this was a recipe for trouble. However, under the circumstances at the time, facing the powerful IBM, it had no choice but to give in.

Time continued to pass, and in 1982, Intel launched the second-generation PC processor 80286, which was fully compatible with the 8086, and was used on the IBM PC/AT.

In 1985, IBM’s challengers began to appear, and Compaq (COMPAQ) produced the world’s first IBM PC compatible machine.

Compaq’s IBM PC Compatible

After that, compatible machine manufacturers appeared like bamboo shoots after the rain. However, even though it is a “cottage machine”, in order to be compatible with IBM PCs, the processors are all from Intel.

Things are changing, and Intel, which is gradually becoming “harder”, has begun to declare war on AMD.

In 1986, Intel went public. In the same year, in order to prevent AMD from continuing to participate in its 80386, Intel began to break the contract and refused to disclose any technical details of the 386 processor to AMD.

So, the feud begins. In 1987, AMD took Intel to court for breach of contract, and Intel immediately countersued AMD for infringement (involving Intel’s 287 FPU) to fight back. Afterwards, AMD sued Intel for monopolizing the market, and Intel again countersued AMD for infringement (involving AMD’s AM486 IP).

In this way, the lawsuit lasted for eight years.

Although AMD ultimately won the lawsuit, outside of the lawsuit, AMD lost. The most important point is that AMD missed the golden period of CPU development.

So is life going well for Intel? Not really.

Compared with the lawsuit with AMD, Intel is facing greater trouble. Or maybe the entire American semiconductor industry is facing a common problem – the Japanese are coming.

Before entering the 1980s, Japan’s economic and national strength had already risen. After entering the 1980s, Japan began to launch an all-round economic offensive against the United States, including the semiconductor industry. (The well-known Japan-US trade war was at that time)

At that time, the quality of Japanese companies’ semiconductor products far surpassed that of the United States, and they also received strong financial support from funds and governments, so their advantages were obvious.

In 1980, Japanese companies accounted for less than 30% of global sales of semiconductor memory, while American companies accounted for more than 60% of sales. In 1985, Japan completely surpassed the United States in the production and sales of semiconductor memory, and the United States became its little brother.

Under the huge impact, U.S. semiconductor companies closed down one after another, and Intel was not immune.

In 1982, Intel laid off 2,000 employees and asked IBM to buy 12% of its bonds for $250 million. Even so, the decline has not stopped.

At the time of Intel’s survival, there was the famous conversation between Grove and Moore——

One day in 1985, Grove came to Moore’s studio. Looking out the window, Grove asked Moore: “If we were laid off and the board of directors hired a new boss, what do you think the first thing he would do is?” Moore replied: “He would abandon semiconductor memory.” Rufu thought for a while and said, “Then why don’t we do this ourselves?”

Therefore, after that, Intel completely abandoned the semiconductor memory business and focused all its attention on microprocessors.

Intel, which focuses on microprocessors, is beginning to gain new vitality.

In 1987, Grove was appointed president and CEO of Intel Corporation.

In 1989, Intel launched the 80486 processor, which was welcomed by the market. With its outstanding performance, Intel’s achievements surpassed all Japanese semiconductor companies.

It can be said that the advent of 80486 marked the end of Intel’s transition period and became a standard microprocessor manufacturer, making Intel the number one semiconductor manufacturer in the world.

In the 1990s, the rise and popularity of the Windows operating system further promoted the development of PCs and microprocessors.

Grove and a certain genius boy

grove and another genius

In 1993, Intel launched the epoch-making Pentium processor.

“Ben Yi”

Pen is 5, and tium is the end of the element.

In fact, from a logical and traditional perspective, the fifth generation should be called 586. Such was its early title. But Grove believes that the company should register a new trademark for this new CPU to protect the company’s exclusive rights to it. Therefore, 586 was renamed “Pentium”.

But in industry and academia, we still habitually refer to Intel’s processors as the x86 series.

In any case, let’s take a leap. This “leap” has indeed opened up Intel’s “leap” era.

In the 1990s, the competition for workstations and CPUs was actually very fierce. Among them, the main competitors are the five major manufacturers SUN, SGI, IBM, DEC and HP, in addition to Motorola. These competitors all use RISC-CPU architecture (RISC, simple instruction computer), while Intel and AMD use CISC-CPU architecture (CISC, complex instruction computer).

Although RISC was faster and was more favored by the industry at the time, Intel under Grove still insisted on taking CISC-CPU as its primary direction. In the end, Intel relied on its huge R&D investment, as well as its advantages in compatibility and mass production speed, to defeat other opponents and successfully consolidate its CPU dominance.

In 1999, Intel’s market capitalization reached a staggering $509 billion.

In the same year, it launched a new Celeron processor.

In 2001, Intel’s 64-bit server processor Itanium was launched, and Intel completely surpassed SUN, the representative of RISC processors, in the server market.

In 2006, Intel launched its first dual-core processor platform, announcing that processors had officially entered the dual-core era.

In 2008, the Core (commonly known as “Core”) processor was born. It has hyper-threading technology and its performance is far better than that of competitors such as AMD. Intel’s position in the high-end market is becoming more secure.

In 2009, Intel launched another quad-core processor.

In March 2011, Intel adopted the product classification of i3, i5 and i7 for the first time, distinguishing clear market strategies of low, mid and high-end.

In 2014, Intel launched the desktop 8-core 16-thread processor: i7-5960X, which is the first eight-core desktop processor based on the 22nm process. It has a level 3 cache of up to 20MB, a main frequency of 3.5GHz, and a floating-point The computing power is more than 10 times that of ordinary work computers.

. . .

In this way, Intel, which has passed its golden development period, has become a giant in the IT industry. It now has more than 100,000 employees, a market value of US$240 billion, and annual revenue of more than US$60 billion. In the just-released 2018 International Fortune 500 list, it ranked 146th.

However, times are changing, the environment is changing, and the market and needs are also changing. Today’s Intel is far from worry-free.

The first is the love and death between the old enemy AMD.

Although for a long time, Intel has been ravaging AMD with its crushing advantage, and Intel was once called the toothpaste factory (because AMD products are not strong, Intel is not willing to launch new products frequently, so it deliberately hides its strength , like squeezing out toothpaste, pushing out a slightly more powerful processor bit by bit).

However, AMD suddenly launched the Ryzen processor last year. With its higher core design, good core performance, and most importantly, lower price, it has been wildly popular in the market. This caught Intel off guard and struggled to cope.

Ryzen processor

Now, the PC processor market pattern has changed drastically. The market shares of AMD and Intel are almost the same, and the two companies are back on the same starting line.

In addition to PC processors, Intel’s biggest headache is the mobile processor market, which is the processor used in mobile phones and portable wearable devices.

mobile phone chip

Even as Intel dominates the global PC and server chip market, it has neglected mobile chips.

It once refused to provide processor chips for the first-generation iPhone, and then continued to miss opportunities and missed opportunities in the development of mobile device chips.

Intel previously launched XScale mobile chip, but failed

The British company ARM, relying on the lower energy consumption of ARM architecture processors, has successfully emerged and occupied the vast majority of the mobile chip market share.

In this way, Intel has single-handedly created the current passive situation and watched the huge cake being eaten by others.

Not only external troubles, but also internal worries. Not long ago, Intel CEO Ke Zanqi resigned due to love at the studio, and the new CEO has not yet been confirmed.

Ke Zaiqi

The so-called “knowing destiny at fifty”, we don’t know whether Intel will accept its destiny now, but if it wants to continue to survive, then it urgently needs a successful transformation.

If it can’t survive by cutting off its arm like it did 32 years ago, then it’s unclear whether it can blow out the candles on its 60th birthday.

In any case, Intel still has many core skills and its own main force. There are still many opportunities waiting for it in the era, including 5G, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, which are all areas where Intel can flex its muscles.

Let’s wish it good luck.

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