The Intel Story

Intel founded on July 18, 1968 by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, both from Fairchild Semiconductors and later joined by Andy Grove, who would become one of it's most prominent CEOs, that would grow to become one of the giants of the Tech World.

Interestingly of the 3 founders of Intel, only Robert Noyce was purely into Physics, Gordon Moore was a chemist, while Andy Grove was a chemical engineer. Noyce also invented the IC with Jack Kilby, and Arthur Rock was the one who helped them find investors.

Gordon Moore was a Phd in Chemistry from CalTech, and he joined his fellow alumnus ,Nobel Prize winning physicist William Shockley at Shockley Semiconductors , before becoming part of the Traitorous 8 who left the company, thanks to Shockley's erratic and whimsical behavior.

Gordon Moore was one of the Traitorous 8, along with Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Sheldon Roberts. Hoerni and Roberts along with Jay Last founded Amelco now Teledyne, Eugene Kleiner became one of Silicon Valley's leading VCs.

He also came up with the Moore's Law at Fairchild, where he predicted that the number of components in an Integrated Circuit would keep doubling every year for the next 10 year, which in turn led to miniaturization in tech.

Noyce was the co inventor of the Integrated Circuit with Jack Kilby, which fuelled the PC revolution, and also gave Silicon Valley it's name. Hailing from Iowa, he graduated from MIT, worked for some time at Philco, before joining Shockley, where he was part of the Traitorous 8.

In a sense Intel, was the result of 3 great minds, each different in their own way, but all critical to the company's success. Noyce was more the visionary and tech evangelist, while Moore was the hard core techie kind.

In fact Robert Noyce bought in a more different corporate culture, treating employees as part of family, a hands on management style, less structured working environment, declined executive perks, no exclusive cabins, that in a way became Silicon Valley's culture too.

The third Intel guy, Andrew Grove, was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, who fled the country's communist regime, real name was Andras Grof. His father was arrested by the Nazis when he was just 8, and taken to a labor camp. He fled Hungary after the failure of the 1956 Revolution.

In a way Andy Grove's is an inspiring story, fled Hungary when he as 20, barely able to speak English, later made his way to the US.

“By the time I was 20, I had been through Nazi occupation, Red Army occupying Budapest, aborted 1956 Revolution"

Like many other immigrants, he arrived in US with little money, did odd jobs to support himself, his wife Eva was another refugee, and he managed to graduate in Chem Engg from City College, NY. He was with Fairchild for some time as a researcher, later became Asst Director of Development there. Familiar with ICs, he later wrote a college textbook Physics and Technology of Semiconductor Devices. He also got his fellow Hungarian Leslie Vadasz to join with him in Intel.

Intel was not the original name actually, initially suggested MoorNoyce, ala HP, but was rejected, as was HomoPhone, but again rejected as it meant more noise. Founded as NM Electronics, but changed to Intel which meant Integrated Electronics.

Incidentally just a year after Intel, Jerry Sanders founded AMD in May, 1969. He too like Moore and Noyce was from Fairchild, which in a way was an incubator of sorts for all aspiring entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. AMD later became Intel's chief rival in microprocessors.

Intel's main target was the semiconductor memory market, which then was replacing the magnetic core memory used in RAMs. Their first product was the Schottky transistor, that was nearly twice as fast as the diode implementations by Fairchild.

Intel 4004 was their first commercially available microprocessor, in 1971, made possible by use of Silicon Gate technology, that was designed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild, , as well as the first microcomputer in 1972, though DRAM chips dominated their business. However increasing competition from Japanese semiconductor makers, meant Intel's DRAM chips did not have the same profitability like before. Around the same time growth of IBM PC convinced Moore, that it would be better to focus on microprocessors primarily.

The development of the Microprocessor in 1971, was a major breakthrough in the Tech world. What it essentially did was to miniaturize the CPU, and ensure much smaller machines could do the same function at higher speeds, it was a revolution that laid foundation for PCs. The 80s saw Intel zooming ahead, with it's position of leading microprocessor supplier to IBM, as well as other PC makers. A decade of rapid growth, as the primary microprocessor supplier to the PC industry, and in 1987 Andy Grove took over after Moore retired.

The 80s saw Intel zooming ahead, with it's position of leading microprocessor supplier to IBM, as well as other PC makers. A decade of rapid growth, as the primary microprocessor supplier to the PC industry, and in 1987 Andy Grove took over after Moore retired.

16 bit Intel 286 Microprocessor in 1982, featuring around 14,000 transistors, was built into many PCs and it launched the CHMOS technology in 1983, that improved chip performance. The iconic Pentium processor was launched in 1993 with 3.1 million transistors, initial speeds of 60 MHz, was later followed by Pentium Pro in 1995 for 32 bit workstations. And the Pentium MMX in 1996.

The by now famous Intel Inside marketing campaign was launched in 1991, in response to the growing competition from AMD, Zilog, and a host of Japanese firms. It was the result of a meeting Intel's Dennis Carter had in 1989 with Micro Age's Ron Mion. It was the largest distributor for PCs in US then, and Intel wanted it to market their chips too. However Micro Age, felt customers should decide which Microprocessor they wanted, but educating them on why Intel was the better choice would be hard.

That was when Mion came up with the proposal, for very billboard put up by MicroAge, Intel would sponsor it saying "If you're buying a personal computer, make sure it has Intel inside" which led to the campaign's name too. Soon Intel Inside caught on, and the sales of Intel based PCs zoomed, the famous 5 note jingle for Intel Inside was composed in 1994 by Walter Werwoza of the Austrian band Edleweiss. , and the swirl logo was designed by art director Steve Grigg.