The rise of Intel, the king of processors (Part 1)

2018 is Intel's 50th birthday. The world's top CPU player held a joint show of 2018 drones at its branch in California to celebrate its 50th birthday in a high-profile manner.

As the ancients said, "At fifty, one knows the destiny of heaven." However, high-tech companies that can survive for fifty years are rare. Intel can be said to be one of the few companies, a legend that has been glorious for nearly half a century. It is not an exaggeration to call it an "empire." It also has a rich history and a thrilling journey. It has experienced various crises and opportunities, and has had astonishing victories and disappointing defeats. Now let's learn how this CPU emperor was born.

This all starts with the arrival of a great man...

Back in the mid-20th century, Hewlett-Packard, founded in 1939 by Stanford University students David Packard and Bill Hewlett, was undoubtedly the earliest electronics company in Silicon Valley, U.S. However, it was the arrival of another great man who really ignited the spectacular Silicon Valley fire on this land.

In 1947, William Shockely of Bell Labs in the United States and two other scientists, Bardeen and Brattain, invented the transistor. Nine years later, they won the Nobel Prize in Physics without any dispute. Subsequently, the "Father of the Transistor" Shockley founded the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. Shockley's arrival seemed to have planted a big flag in Silicon Valley.

The first transistor

In 1956, talented people who admired the name of the "Father of the Transistor" were full of enthusiasm, and job applications flew to Shockley's office in Silicon Valley like snowflakes. Among these job seekers, Shockley selected eight young scientists he thought had the most potential, including Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, who later founded Intel.

You may think that with the support of these eight geniuses and their big brothers, the laboratory can be said to be even more powerful and will surely sweep the field of science and technology in the future.

Unfortunately, the laboratory did not produce any decent products within a year. The eight ambitious young people were very disappointed and decided to leave collectively. Shockley, who was furious, called them the "Traitorous Eight".

But what no one could have imagined was that the eight Silicon Valley geniuses who were once denounced as the "traitorous eight" co-founded a legendary company that influenced the global semiconductor industry - Fairchild Semiconductor, which changed the landscape of Silicon Valley and the entire technology industry in one fell swoop. With the efforts of the eight people, Fairchild Semiconductor gradually became the world's largest, most innovative and most exciting semiconductor company, and also became the "West Point Military Academy" for talents in the electronics and computer industries.

Eleven years after the founding of Fairchild Semiconductor, the eight co-founders left the company to start their own businesses because they were tired of the control and constraints of investors. However, talent is the most valuable legacy left by Fairchild. The total market value of companies founded by employees from Fairchild exceeds one trillion US dollars. To date, half of the approximately 70 semiconductor companies in Silicon Valley are direct or indirect descendants of this company. The new generation of entrepreneurs who came out have become famous one by one, including Charles Spock, who led the United States National Semiconductor NSC to achieve a leap forward, and Jerry Sanders, who led seven Fairchild employees to establish Advanced Micro Instruments (AMD)... Of course, the most famous of these Silicon Valley pioneers who left Fairchild are Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, who founded Intel. It can be said that without Fairchild, there would be no Silicon Valley today.

Moore + Noyce = Intel is born

Turning our attention back to the two "big guys", Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, two good friends, went to the Industrial and Commercial Bureau to register. Originally, the name of their new company was a combination of their names - Moore Noyce, but they found that this name had been registered by a hotel chain. As a last resort, they took the abbreviation of the two words "Integrated Electronics" as the company name. Since then, the "Intel Empire" was established!

Robert Noyce is the founder of Intel. His talent can be described as both moral and artistic. Noyce is not only good at "exploration", but also very outstanding in academics. He and Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments jointly invented the integrated circuit, which embeds all the components of the circuit into a single semiconductor. Integrated circuits have superior performance and low mass production costs. Without integrated circuits, there would be no computer industry today.

The greatest achievement of this great man was that during his reign, he developed the first microprocessor in human history, the Intel 4004, which ushered in a new era of integrated electronics.

There is no need to say much about Gordon Moore, "Intel II", a legend in the semiconductor industry, the inventor of Moore's Law, he holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate in physical chemistry from the California Institute of Technology. There is no doubt that he is another highly professional "emperor". If Robert Noyce is the brain of the empire, then Gordon Moore is its heart.

Moore published the famous "Moore's Law" in the 35th issue of "Electronics" magazine that year, which has become the most significant paper in the history of semiconductors to date. The law states that the circuit density of microprocessor chips, and its potential computing power, doubles every other year. In order to make this description more accurate, in 1975, Moore made some corrections and adjusted the doubling time from one year to two years. In fact, the more accurate time later was the average of the two: 18 months.

Moore's Law is like the best conductor. In the following decades, it directed Intel and IT practitioners around the world to perform a symphony of the modern computer industry.

The weapon that made Intel famous: the new generation memory 3101

After Intel was founded,

When 8086 was launched, Intel's arch-enemy AMD also benefited from it. The "good guy" IBM required Intel to authorize AMD before allowing it to become the second supplier of 8086 chips. It was unwise to avoid IBM's synergy and drive in order to achieve breakthroughs and development in its own business. Faced with the giant's domineering demands, Intel had to bow its head and obey, so Intel and IBM signed a series of cooperation framework agreements that now seem to be a shame. Compare the three core terms:

1. Intel will give the core design technology of the chip to AMD for free.

2. Intel will give the core design technology of the chip to IBM for free, and IBM's wafer factory has the right to produce.

3. IBM gets 20% of Intel's equity.
 

Even though the Intel and AMD stalk was laid, it also became the fuse for the two giants to confront each other in the future.

Intel vs AMD, the 8-year war begins

Afterwards, Intel quickly developed the second-generation PC processor 80286, which was fully compatible with the 8086 and used in the IBM PC/AT. After that, compatible computer manufacturers emerged like bamboo shoots after rain. It was really a matter of time, and Intel, which had gradually become "tough", began to turn against AMD. In 1986, Intel went public. In the same year, in order to prevent AMD from continuing to get involved in its 80386, Intel began to break the contract and refused to disclose any technical details of the 386 processor to AMD.

AMD is not someone you can easily mess with. If you don’t let me live, I won’t let you live easily either.

In 1987, AMD sued Intel for breach of contract, and Intel retaliated by suing AMD for infringement (involving Intel's 287 FPU). After that, AMD sued Intel for market monopoly, and Intel again sued AMD for infringement (involving AMD's AM486 IP).

And so the lawsuit lasted for eight years.

Although AMD won the lawsuit in the end, it missed the golden age of CPU development and was left behind by Intel.

In fact, it now seems that Intel, which has gathered so many high-IQ elites, is willing to sign these humiliating contracts, which means that the final result of their evaluation is still in favor of Intel. This is indeed the case. At that time, the blue giant IBM did not look at Intel at all and was not optimistic about Intel's future development, so it sold all its 20% equity not long after (thinking about it now, I guess I regret it). The technology handed over to AMD and IBM, one because the design and manufacturing cycle could not keep up, and the other because of the efficiency and cost, ultimately did not gain any substantial product and performance growth due to these "unequal treaties". On the contrary, Intel achieved rapid development by relying on IBM's computer products, and chip shipments continued to rise.

Intel's business was going smoothly afterwards, but they encountered a stronger opponent, which forced them to think about their strategic transformation. Intel realized that if they took a wrong step, the company would no longer exist. Standing on the brink of life and death, Intel made such a move. To be continued...