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Intel Corporation, or better known as Intel, is an American multinational corporation and a technology company based in Silicon Valley, in Santa Clara, California. Intel is currently the second largest and most valuable semiconductor chip maker in the world, having recently been overtaken by Samsung. She is also the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, which are found on all PCs.

It also manufactures motherboard chipsets, network interface drivers, and integrated circuits, flash drives, graphics chips, embedded processors, and other communications and computing related devices . Do you want to know everything about the blue giant? You have reached the best article on the net.

Index of contents

Intel's story, from a memory maker to the market leader in x86 processors

Intel was founded in Mountain View, California, the long ago July 18, 1968, by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, the pioneers of semiconductors, and widely associated with the executive leadership and vision of Andrew Grove. The word Intel represents an acronym for the words integration and electronic. Its co-founder Robert Noyce was a key inventor of the integrated circuit. He was also one of the first developers of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, which accounted for most of his business until 1981 despite the fact that he created the world's first commercial microprocessor in 1971, it was not until the success of the PC that this became his main business.

During the 1990s, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs fostering the rapid growth of the computer industry. It became the dominant provider of PC microprocessors and was known for its aggressive and anti-competitive tactics in defense of its market position, particularly against AMD (Advanced Micro Devices).

Arthur Rock, investor and venture capitalist helped Intel founders find investors, while Max Palevsky was on the board from an early stage. Total initial investment in Intel was 2.5 million convertible bonds and $ 10, 000 Rock. Just two years later, Intel became a public company through an initial public offering raising $ 6.8 million. Intel's third employee was Andy Grove, a chemical engineer, who later ran the company for much of the 1980s and 1990s.

Since its founding, Intel has distinguished itself by its ability to create logic circuits using semiconductor devices. The founders' goal was the semiconductor memory market, widely predicted to replace magnetic core memory. Its first product was a quick entry into the small high-speed memory market in 1969, the 64-bit bipolar SRAM 3101 Schottky TTL memory, which was almost twice as fast as the diode implementations of the time. In the same year, Intel also produced the 1024-bit 3301 Schottky ROM, and the world's first commercial-grade metal oxide semiconductor (MOSFET) field-effect transistor 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 expensive for mainframe memories, a problem solved with the launch of Intel 1103 in 1970. Intel's business grew during the 1970s, As it expanded and improved its manufacturing processes and produced a broader range of products, still dominated by various memory devices.

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Intel 4004, the dawn of the semiconductor era

Intel 4004 was the first microprocessor created by Federico Faggin, and the first in the world, which was commercially available in 1971. Despite this great novelty, the business was dominated by dynamic random access memory chips in the early 1980s. However, the increased competition from Japanese semiconductor manufacturers had reduced the profitability of this market in 1983, in addition to the growing success of the IBM personal computer, based on an Intel microprocessor.

These two events led Gordon Moore, CEO of Intel since 1975, to shift the company's focus to microprocessors. Moore's decision to use the 386 chip as the sole source contributed to the company's continued success. The development of the microprocessor represented a notable advance in integrated circuit technology, miniaturizing the central processing unit of a computer, and making it possible for small machines to perform calculations that in the past could only be done by very large and heavy machines.

Despite the great importance of the microprocessor, the Intel 4004 and its successors, the 8008 and 8080 were never the main contributors of revenue to Intel. Given this situation and the arrival of the next processor, the 8086 in 1978. The blue giant embarked on a major marketing campaign for that chip, and aimed to win as many customers as possible for its new processor. A major victory for Intel came from the newly created IBM PC division.

I BM introduced its personal computer in 1981 with great success quickly. In 1982, Intel created the 80286 microprocessor, which two years later was used in the IBM PC / AT. Compaq, the first clone maker of IBM PCs, produced its first 80286 processor-based desktop system in 1985 and in 1986 followed up with the first 80386 processor-based system, outperforming IBM and establishing a competitive market with Intel as the key component supplier.

In 1975 Intel had started a project to develop a very technologically advanced 32-bit microprocessor, the Intel iAPX 432 finally released in 1981. This project was too ambitious and the processor was never able to meet its performance targets, failing in the market. During this period, Andrew Grove drastically redirected the company, shutting down much of its DRAM business and directing resources to the emerging microprocessor business. Microprocessor manufacturing was in its infancy, and manufacturing problems often slowed or stopped production, disrupting supplies to customers. To mitigate this risk, customers insisted on the need to turn to several chipmakers to ensure a constant supply, since if one of them failed, the rest will be able to maintain a certain supply.

The 8080 and 8086 series microprocessors were produced by various companies, especially AMD, with which Intel had a technology exchange contract. Grove made the decision not to license the 386 design to other manufacturers, in doing so it breached its contract with AMD, which sued and received millions of dollars in damages, but was unable to manufacture new CPU designs. In return, AMD began developing and manufacturing its own x86 designs to compete with Intel.

Intel introduced the 486 microprocessor in 1989. In addition, in 1990 it established a second design team working in parallel for the code-named “P5” and “P6 ” processors, committing to offer a new processor every two years, by comparison with the four or more years previously taken. Engineers Vinod Dham and Rajeev Chandrasekhar were key figures in the core team that invented the 486 chip, and later the Intel Pentium chip. The P5 was introduced in 1993 as Intel Pentium, substituting the name of a registered trademark for the previous part number, as numbers, such as 486, cannot be legally registered as registered trademarks in the United States. The P6 continued in 1995 as the Pentium Pro and was upgraded to the Pentium II in 1997.

Intel's design team in Santa Clara embarked on a successor to the x86 architecture in 1993, codenamed “P7”. The resulting version of the IA-64 64-bit architecture was the Itanium, which was finally introduced in June 2001. The performance of the Itanium running legacy x86 code did not meet expectations, and it was often unable to compete with x86-64., the 32-bit x86 architecture extension created by AMD in parallel. Furthermore, the Hillsboro team designed the Willamette processors, codenamed P68, which were marketed as the Pentium 4.

In June 1994, Intel engineers discovered a defect in the floating point subsection of the Pentium P5 microprocessor. Under certain data-dependent conditions, the low-order bits of the result of a floating-point division were incorrect. The error could be exacerbated in subsequent calculations. Intel corrected the error in a future chip revision, and under public pressure issued a full recall and replaced the faulty Pentium CPUs.

The error was independently discovered in October 1994 by Thomas Nicely, a professor of mathematics at Lynchburg College, who on October 30 posted a message about his finding online after contacting Intel without receiving a response. During Thanksgiving in 1994, The New York Times published an article by journalist John Markoff highlighting the error. Intel changed its position and offered to replace each chip, quickly establishing a large end-user support organization. This resulted in a charge of $ 475 million against Intel's revenue in 1994.

This incident of the Pentium flaw propelled Intel from being a generally unknown technology provider for most computer users to a household name. Along with a spike in the "Intel Inside" campaign, the episode is considered to be a positive event for Intel, changing some of its business practices to focus more on the end user and generate substantial public awareness, while avoiding a negative impression. durable.

Soon after, Intel began manufacturing fully configured systems for the dozens of rapidly emerging clone PC companies. At its peak in the mid-1990s, Intel manufactured more than 15% of all computers, becoming the third largest provider at the time. Driven by its privileged position as a microprocessor supplier to IBM in the late 1980s, Intel embarked on a period of 10 years of unprecedented growth as the leading and most profitable supplier of hardware to the PC industry.

During the 1990s, Intel Architecture Labs was responsible for many of the PC hardware innovations, including the PCI bus, the PCI Express (PCIe) bus, and the universal serial bus (USB). Its video and graphics software was important in the development of digital video software, but later his efforts were overshadowed by competition from Microsoft.

Thanks to the Intel Inside marketing campaign launched in 1991, Intel was able to associate brand loyalty with consumer selection, so that by the late 1990s its line of Pentium processors had become a household name for the users. After 2000, the growth in demand for high-end microprocessors slowed down. Intel's competitors, especially AMD, garnered a significant market share, initially in low and mid-range processors, but eventually across the entire product range, and Intel's dominant position in its core market was greatly reduced.

In 2005, CEO Paul Otellini reorganized the company to reorient its core processor and chip business on various platforms such as business, digital home, digital health, and mobility. In 2006, Intel unveiled its "Conroe" microarchitecture at 65nm, with critical acclaim. The range of products based on this architecture was perceived as an exceptional leap in processor performance that at one stroke led Intel to regain much of its leadership in the field. In 2008 Intel made another small leap forward with the Penryn microarchitecture, which was 45nm.

Later that year, Intel released the first processor with the Nehalem architecture also manufactured at 45nm. In 2011 the Sandy Bridge architecture arrived, manufactured at 32 nm and which is the basis of all the processors launched by Intel since then, until reaching the current Coffee Lake manufactured at 14 nm.

Meltdown and Specter, the most serious vulnerabilities especially affect Intel

In early January 2018, all Intel processors manufactured since 1995 were reported to have been subject to two security flaws named Meltdown and Specter. These processors need software patches to protect the security of users.

These patches impact workload-dependent performance. Patches have been reported to significantly slow performance on older computers. In contrast, on the 8th generation Core platforms, the newer ones, drops in the benchmark performance have been measured from 2% to 14%. On March 15, 2018, Intel reported that it will redesign its future processors to protect itself from the Specter and Meltdown vulnerability.

Legal problems have not slowed Intel

Intel had also been involved for several years in various legal disputes. US law did not initially recognize intellectual property rights related to microprocessor topology until the Semiconductor Microprocessor Protection Act of 1984, a law sought by Intel to protect its intellectual property and block competition. In the late 1980s and 1990s, after this law was passed, Intel sued companies that tried to develop chips to compete with their processors. Intel embarked on several lawsuits that significantly burdened the competition with legal bills, even if Intel lost. The antitrust allegations had been latent since the early 1990s and were the cause of a lawsuit against Intel in 1991. In 2004 and 2005, AMD filed other lawsuits against Intel related to unfair competition.

These demands by AMD resulted in a fine imposed by the European Union on Intel in 2009, the sentence forced Intel to pay its rival $ 1.85 billion. The reason for the fine was that Intel had forced all manufacturers to use their processors and not AMD's, under threat of withdrawing the discount it was giving them if they failed to buy almost all or all of the chips they needed. Added to all this is the fact that Intel forced manufacturers to delay the launch of their AMD-based products and paid Media Saturn Holding to sell only computers with Intel processors.

As we can see, Intel is not exactly a representative of fair play in the market. Other controversies have been related to Intel's compilers for the x86 architecture, alleging that they forced AMD processors to run unnecessary code in order to consume cycles and degrade their performance.

Intel and its relationship with Open Source

Intel is a company quite involved in Open Source communities. In 2006 Intel released drivers for its graphics cards under the MIT X.org license. It has also released network drivers for FreeBSD available under BSD license and ported to OpenBSD. Intel has also released the EFI core under a BSD-compatible license and participated in the Moblin project and the LessWatts.org campaign.

However, not everything has been pink in relation to open source. The drivers of its wireless cards are distributed under a proprietary license, something that has caused several criticisms against the company, mainly by communities such as Linspire and Theo de Raadt, creator of the OpenBSD project. Critics claim that these proprietary drivers only benefit Microsoft and its Windows operating system.

Regarding the Linux operating system, Intel is considered to offer exceptional support for this free operating system. Its processors are usually the most used by users of this platform, and its integrated graphics cards also enjoy great support.

Current Intel processors

Intel currently has two lines of processors for home computers based on the x86 architecture. On the one hand we have the Coffee Lake, which represent the eighth generation of the Intel Core series and are the high-performance and high-power-consumption processors. On the other hand, it has the Gemini Lake processors, some smaller chips and focused on achieving the maximum possible energy efficiency.

High-performance Intel Core Coffee Lake processors

Intel Coffee Lake represents the current generation of high-performance processors from Intel, these correspond to the eighth generation, although the ninth is already on the way and it is very possible that they are already on the market when you read this post.

Coffee Lake is Intel's code name for its 14nm processors after Broadwell, Skylake, and Kaby Lake. Graphics built into Coffee Lake chips enable compatibility with DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 2.0, and HDCP 2.2 connectivity. Coffee Lake is also characterized by natively supporting DDR4-2666 MHz memory in dual channel configuration.

Intel Coffee Lake processors introduce a major change to the nomenclature of Intel's main processors, as Core i5 and i7 models have six cores, unlike previous generations that have only four cores. Core i3 models have four cores and are ruling out Hyperthreading technology for the first time. The first Coffee Lake processors were released on October 5, 2017 for the 300 series chipset, being incompatible with 200 and 100 series chipsets despite maintaining the same physical LGA 1151 socket as Skylake and Kaby Lake. The official reason for this is that the pinout of 200 and 100 series motherboards is electrically incompatible with these processors. On April 2, 2018, Intel released additional desktop models within the Core i3, i5, i7, Pentium Gold and Celeron series.

Intel Coffee Lake processors for desktop systems:

Serie

Model

Cores

Threads

Base frequency

Turbo frequency

iGPU

IGPU frequency

L3 cache

TDP

Memory

Number of cores used

one

two

3

4

5

6

Core i7

8086K

6

12

4.0 GHz

5.0

4.6

4.5

4.4

4.3

UHD 630

1.20 GHz

12 MB

95 W

DDR4-2666

8700K

3.7 GHz

4.7

8700

3.2 GHz

4.6

4.5

4.4

4.3

65 W

8700T

2.4 GHz

4.0

3.9

3.9

3.8

35 W

Core i5

8600K

6

3.6 GHz

4.3

4.2

4.1

1.15 GHz

9 MB

95 W

8600

3.1 GHz

65 W

8600T

2.3 GHz

3.7

3.6

3.5

35 W

8500

3.0 GHz

4.1

4.0

3.9

1.10 GHz

65 W

8500T

2.1 GHz

3.5

3.4

3.3

3.2

35 W

8400

2.8 GHz

4.0

3.9

3.8

1.05 GHz

65 W

8400T

1.7 GHz

3.3

3.2

3.1

3.0

35 W

Core i3

8350K

4

4

4.0 GHz

N / A

1.15 GHz

8 MB

91 W

DDR4-2400

8300

3.7 GHz

62 W

8300T

3.2 GHz

35 W

8100

3.6 GHz

1.10 GHz

6 MB

65 W

8100T

3.1 GHz

35 W

Pentium Gold

G5600

two

3.9 GHz

4 MB

54 W

G5500

3.8 GHz

G5500T

3.2 GHz

35 W

G5400

3.7 GHz

UHD 610

1.05 GHz

54 W

G5400T

3.1 GHz

35 W

Celeron

G4920

two

3.2 GHz

2 MB

54W

G4900

3.1 GHz

G4900T

2.9 GHz

35 W

Intel Coffee Lake processors for portable systems:

Serie	Model	Cores / threads	Base frequency	Turbo frequency	iGPU	IGPU frequency	L3 cache	L4 cache (eDRAM)	TDP
Base	Max.
Core i9	8950HK	6 (12)	2.9 GHz	4.8 GHz	UHD 630	350 MHz	1.20 GHz	12 MB	N / A	45 W
Core i7	8850H	2.6 GHz	4.3 GHz	1.15 GHz	9 MB
8750H	2.2 GHz	4.1 GHz	1.10 GHz
8559U	4 (8)	2.7 GHz	4.5 GHz	Iris Plus 655	300 MHz	1.20 GHz	8 MB	128 MB	28 W
Core i5	8400H	2.5 GHz	4.2 GHz	UHD 630	350 MHz	1.10 GHz	N / A	45 W
8300H	2.3 GHz	4.0 GHz	1.00 GHz
8269U	2.6 GHz	4.2 GHz	Iris Plus 655	300 MHz	1.10 GHz	6 MB	128 MB	28 W
8259U	2.3 GHz	3.8 GHz	1.05 GHz
Core i3	8109U	2 (4)	3.0 GHz	3.6 GHz	4 MB

Low-power Intel processors

Given the great success of tablets and mini laptops during their first years of life, Intel fully attempted to enter this niche with a new family of low-power processors, dubbed Atom. These are very small x86 processors and designed to be as efficient as possible with the use of energy. The first generations of these processors gave life to netbooks, low-cost computers with modest benefits but sufficient for everyday tasks. Some of these Atom-powered Netbooks integrated Nvidia Ion graphics, giving them the ability to stream 1080p multimedia content.

In June 2011, Intel attempted to take a further step forward with its Atom processors to penetrate the market for tablets and smartphones, a sector that was generating a huge amount of revenue for all who were present. Its first Atom processor for tablets and smartphones, codenamed Medfield, arrived in the first half of 2012, followed by Clover Trail technology in the second half of 2012. Medfield came manufactured in 32 nanometers, just like Clover. Trail. None of these processors managed to sneak successfully into the main smartphones or the main tablets.

Intel did not give up and continued betting on its Atom platform. An important step was taken in 2013 with the Bay Trail chips manufactured at 22 nm and based on a renewed architecture, which managed to greatly increase performance and energy efficiency. These processors did not succeed in smartphones either, but they did manage to do so with tablets and Mini PCs, very small and inexpensive computers that are based on these efficient Intel chips and the Windows 10 operating system. Intel's Bay Trail has continued to evolve until bring to life the Cherry Trail, Apollo Lake and Gemini Lake processors, all manufactured at 14nm and capable of offering an exceptional balance of price and performance.

Gemini Lake is the current low-power platform from Intel, some processors manufactured at 14 nm that we can find in many Mini PCs, tablets and laptops, the majority of these devices being of Chinese origin. Gemini Lake offers the ability to play HDR content in 4K resolution and 60 FPS, and is capable of excelling in all day-to-day tasks such as browsing, office, email, and many more tasks.

The following table summarizes the features of current Intel Gemini Lake processors:

Intel Gemini Lake processors
	Desk	Mobile devices
Pentium Silver J5005	Celeron J4105	Celeron J4005	Pentium Silver N5000	Celeron N4100	Celeron N4000
Cores	4	two	4	two
Base Frequency	1.5 GHz	1.5 GHz	2.0 GHz	1.1 GHz	1.1 GHz	1.1 GHz
Turbo Frequency	2.8 GHz	2.5 GHz	2.7 GHz	2.7 GHz	2.4 GHz	2.6 GHz
Cache	4 MB
Architecture	Goldmont Plus
iGPU	UHD 605	UHD 600	UHD 605	UHD 600
iGPU EUs	18	12	18	12
iGPU Frequency	800	750	700	750	700	650
TDP	10 W	6.5 W
RAM	128-bit DDR4 / LPDDR3 / LPDDR4 up to 2400 MT / s and 8 GB
PCIe 2.0	6 Lanes

The 10nm, a path full of problems for Intel

The next step in Intel's evolution goes through the manufacturing process at the 10nm Tri-Gate, a very grand process that is causing the company many more problems than anticipated. The 10nm should have been on the market two years ago by the Cannon Lake processors, which have suffered delay after delay and are scheduled for 2019, if there is no other last-minute change.

Itel does not achieve a sufficient success rate with the 10nm to mass-manufacture all its processors, something that has led the company to stretch the life of its 14nm to fifty generations (Broadwell, Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and the future Ice Lake of 2019). Intel Ice Lake will be the latest generation of Intel processors manufactured at 14nm, as long as there is no other 10nm delay involved.

T his manufacturing process at 10 nm will achieve a great increase in the density of the transistors, allowing to manufacture a new generation of processors with a much higher performance than the current ones and with a lower energy consumption.

The assault on the graphics card market for 2019

The great boom in artificial intelligence and the large capacity of graphics cards in this regard, have led Intel to develop its own high-performance GPU architecture, which will bring to life the company's graphics cards that will bequeath to the market in 2019. It is noted that these cards will be announced in early 2019 Jan. CES in Las Vegas, although it is not confirmed.

To create its high-performance GPU architecture, Intel has formed a team led by Raja Koduri, the former leader of Intel's graphics card division. Arctic Sound and Jupiter Sound are the code names for Intel's first high-performance graphics architectures. Other important members of the development team for this technology are Chris Hook, former Marketing Manager at AMD, and Jim Keller, who is responsible for the great success of AMD's Zen CPU architecture. Intel seems to have run all the necessary ingredients to succeed in this new adventure, although only time will tell.

Surely you are interested in reading our sections on Intel processors:

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