Timeline of Intel

This is a timeline of Intel, one of the world's largest and highest valued semiconductor chip makers.

Big picture

Time period	Key developments at Intel
1970–1980	Intel manufactures a variety of semiconductors—from DRAM to processors. It goes IPO in 1971.
1981–1986	Intel's share of DRAM decreases due to competition with Japan, while its share of processor manufacturing increases (and goes through a "valley of death" in 1985–1986). Andrew Grove presides over its difficult decision to transition away from primarily making DRAM memory chips into primarily making processors. Intel also contracts with IBM to establish Intel chips as the standard for the personal computer, paving way for Intel's dominance over the market.
1987–1998	Andrew Grove becomes CEO of Intel in 1987. This era is dominated by a boom in personal computer sales. The Intel-IBM alliance is fragile, but Intel benefits by setting the standard for "IBM Clones" like Compaq. Intel also encounters increasing competition from AMD. By 1998, Intel rolls out 3 major semiconductor lines for the personal computer market. From 1987 to 1998, Intel's stock price rose 31.6 percent a year and revenues grew from $1.9 billion to $25.1 billion.[1]
1998–2005	Craig Barrett becomes Intel CEO. The Internet was beginning to usher in massive changes in e-commerce and consumer behavior. Intel launches Centrino mobile technology, which helps usher in the wireless era.
2005–2011	With Moore's Law starting to slow down in 2005, Intel starts releasing multicore processors.[2] By the end of this period, Intel also gains significant traction in its competition against Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
2012–2015	Smartphone purchases significantly increase, but by the end of this period, PC sales start to decline (even though Intel still retains dominance in the PC share of the semiconductor market). Intel's smartphone processors still fail to gain significant traction. Intel also starts to manufacture processors for the Internet of Things market.

Full timeline

Year	Month and date	Event type	Details
1968	July 18	Company	Intel is founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, both who left Fairchild Semiconductor.[3]
1969	May 1	Competition	Advanced Micro Devices is founded by Jerry Sanders. This company would become the second-largest supplier and only significant rival to Intel in the market for x86-based microprocessors.
1970	October	Products	Intel comes out with its 3rd product, the Intel 1103, which put Intel on the map.[4]
1971	October 13	Company	Intel goes IPO at a price of $23.50 a share. At 350,000 shares, this sums to a total of $8.225M.[5]
1971	November 15	Product	Intel launches its first microprocessor, the 4004.[6][7]
1972	April	Product	Intel announces the first 8-bit microprocessor, the 8008.[6][7][8]
1974	April	Product	Intel launches the Intel 8080 microprocessor, the first general-purpose microprocessor, featuring 4,500 transistors.[6] This finally kickstarts computer development.[8]
1976		Product	Intel launches the Intel MCS-48 series of microcontrollers, the world's first microcontrollers (which combine a CPU with memory, peripherals, and input-output functions).[6]
1978	June	Product	Intel introduces the 8086 16-bit microprocessor, which becomes the industry standard (for the x86 instruction set).[8]
1979	November	Product	Intel launches "Operation Crush", a campaign to establish the 8086 as the standard for the 16-bit microprocessor market (which was competing with the technically superior Motorola 68000). This finally convinces IBM to adopt the 8086 in its upcoming personal computer.[4]
1980		Product	Intel and Xerox introduce the cooperative Ethernet project.[6]
1982	February 1	Product	Intel launches the 16-bit Intel 286 microprocessor, which features 134,000 transistors and is built into many PCs.[6]
1983		Product	Intel launches CHMOS technology, which increases chip performance while decreasing power consumption.[6]
1984		Product	Intel announces the world's first CHMOS DRAMs, which have densities as high as 256K.[6]
1985		Product	Intel enters the parallel supercomputer business and introduces the iPSC/1.[6][9]
1985	October	Product	Intel launches (and sole-sources) the 80386 processor, a 32-bit chip that incorporates 275K transistors and can run multiple software programs at once.[4]
1986	September	Partnerships	Compaq buys the 386 for its Deskpro personal computer. Compaq was one of several IBM clones that would adopt Intel processors, which shifted control of the computing industry from IBM to Intel.[4]
1986		Legal	The US-Japan Semiconductor Trade Agreement is signed, opening up Japanese markets to US semiconductor markets.
1989	April 10	Product	Intel introduces the 80486 microprocessor, which it sole-sources for 4 years. This offers backwards compatibility.[4]
1989	October	Marketing	Intel launches the "Red X" marketing campaign by discrediting its original 16-bit and 8-bit products, in order to encourage more people to adopt 32-bit computing.[10]
1990	June 3	Team	Robert Noyce suddenly dies from a heart attack.[11]
1990	November	Competition	Intel loses its suit against AMD. This loss allows AMD to create clones of the 386 processor.[12]
1991	Spring	Product	Intel decides that it will stick with CISC architecture, and cuts off support for RISC architecture, which was internally developed by Les Kohn.[4]
1991		Company	Intel starts the Intel Inside marketing campaign.[6][13]
1992		Competition	Intel becomes the top-ranked seller for semiconductor sales. It has retained its top ranking ever since.[6]
1993	March	Product	Intel launches the Pentium processor, which has 3.1 million transistors, initial speeds of 60 mHz, features an integrated floating-point unit, and is built on a 0.8 micron bi-CMOS process.[6][14]
1994	December	Product	Intel suffers a public relations disaster when the CNN publicized the story that there was a flaw in the way that the Pentium chip did division. Intel argued that the flaw was irrelevant, but then IBM halted shipments of Pentium-based computers, forcing Intel to reverse course and offer a no-questions-asked return policy.[15]
1995	November 1	Product	Intel launches the Pentium Pro processor, a high-performance chip targeted for 32-bit workstations.[6]
1996	October 22	Product	Intel launches the Pentium MMX product line.[16]
1997	May 7	Product	Intel launches the Pentium II line of processors, which is Intel's sixth-generation microarchitecture (P6).[17]
1998	April 1	Company	Intel wins sponsorship rights to the Westinghouse Science Talent Search.[18]
1998	June 29	Product	Intel rolls out the Intel Pentium II Xeon processor, Intel's new high-end solution for the workstation and server markets.[19]
1998	August 24	Product	Intel launches the first processor for the budget PC market segment, the Intel Celeron processor.[20]
1999	February 26	Product	Intel launches the Pentium III generation of microprocessors, which features the addition of the SSE instruction set (to accelerate floating point and parallel calculations).[21]
1999	October	Company	The DJIA adds Intel to its list.[22]
2000		Company	Intel launches Intel Research.
2000	November	Product	Intel introduces the Pentium 4 processor, with an initial speed of 1.5 GHz.[6][23]
2001	May	Legal, Competition	Intel and Advanced Micro Devices make a patent cross-license agreement between the companies.[24]
2003	March	Product	Intel introduces Centrino processor technology for laptop PCs, which made wireless compatibility a standard for laptop computers.[6][25][26]
2004	February	Product	Intel announces that it will implement its first 64-bit processor, and releases the Nocona on June 2004.[27]
2005	June	Legal, Competition	AMD files lawsuit against Intel, claiming that Intel engaged in unfair competition by offering rebates to Japanese PC manufacturers who agreed to eliminate or limit purchases of microprocessors made by AMD or a smaller manufacturer, Transmeta. On November 2009, Intel agrees to pay AMD $1.25 billion in a settlement.
2006	December	Product	Intel launches the Core 2 Duo processor, which marks its transition into dual core processors.[6][28]
2007	November	Competition	Qualcomm launches the furst Snapdragon System on a chip semiconductor product, which included the first 1 GHz processor for mobile phones. By 2011, Snapdragon achieves 50% market share of the smartphone processor market.[29]
2008	March 2	Product	Intel announces the Intel Atom, a line of low-power, low-cost and low-performance x86 and x86-64 microprocessors that can be used for smartphones and tablets.[6]
2008	August 10	Product	Intel announces the Nehalem microprocessor, which represents the new Core i7 brand of high-end microprocessors to replace the Core 2 Duo microprocessors.[30]
2009	November	Legal	Intel pays Advanced Micro Devices $1.25 billion in a settlement over AMD's assertion that Intel rewarded computer makers that used only Intel chips and punished those who bought from AMD.[31]
2011	January	Product	Intel announces the Sandy Bridge series of i7 microprocessors to replace Nehalem. Sandy Bridge microprocessors start out as quad-core.[32]
2011	May	Product	Intel announces that it will put the first 3D transistors. into high-volume production (the structure it invented is called "Tri-Gate").[33]
2013	June	Product	Intel releases the next-generation lineup of desktop and mobile processors in the Core i3, i5, and i7 family - known as Haswell.[34]
2013	September 10	Product	Intel announces the Intel Quark, a tiny chip that can power Internet of Things and wearable devices.[35]
2015	July	Competition	Thomas Sohmers, a 2013 Thiel Fellow, announces that his Rex Systems has scored $1.25 million in venture funding to develop an alternative way to architect chips that use 1/20th of the power that Intel's chips use. He plans by starting at the high-end supercomputers market.[36][37]

References

1. "Intel CEOs: A Look Back". Intelfreepress.com. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
2. "Moore's Law has well exceeded Moore's expectations". Retrieved January 17, 2016.
3. "Intel is founded, July 18, 1968". Edn.com. Retrieved January 17, 2016.
4. Richard Tedlow (2006). Andy Grove. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-59184-139-5.
5. "IT'S OFFICIAL: The IPO Market Is Crippled -- And It's Hurting Our Country - Business Insider". Businessinsider.com. Retrieved January 17, 2016.
6. "Intel Online Museum: Corporate Timeline (Archived version)". Intel Museum. Intel. Archived from the original on January 3, 2013. Retrieved July 23, 2011.
7. "A chronological list of Intel products. The products are sorted by date." (PDF). Intel museum. Intel Corporation. July 2005. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 9, 2007. Retrieved July 31, 2007.
8. "The History of the Microprocessor and the Personal Computer - TechSpot". Techspot.com. Retrieved February 1, 2016.
9. "iPSC-1 - CHM Revolution". Com. Retrieved February 1, 2016.
10. "History of the Microprocessor and the Personal Computer, Part 4 - TechSpot". Techspot.com. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
11. "An Inventor of the Microchip, Robert N. Noyce, Dies at 62". The New York Times. June 4, 1990. Retrieved February 1, 2016.
12. "Intel Loses a Round in 386 Chip Battle : Technology: But the fight is far from over. - latimes". Articles.latimes.com. Retrieved January 31, 2016.
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20. "Intel launches new chips - Aug. 24, 1998". CNN. Retrieved February 1, 2016.
21. "Intel Pentium III (Katmai) microprocessor family". Cpu-world.com. Retrieved February 10, 2016.
22. "Dow Jones industrials to add Intel, Microsoft - Oct. 26, 1999". CNN. Retrieved February 1, 2016.
23. "Intel Introduces The Pentium® 4 Processor". Intel.com. Retrieved February 1, 2016.
24. "Intel and AMD renew patent cross-licensing pact". Eetimes.com. Retrieved January 31, 2016.
25. "Intel's Centrino notebook platform is 10 years old". The Register. March 12, 2013. Retrieved February 1, 2016.
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28. "Good-bye, Pentium--hello, Core 2 Duo - CNET". Cnet.com. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
29. Caulfield, Brian (18 July 2012). "No Factories, No Phones, No Fuss: How Qualcomm Grabs Wireless Profits". Forbes. Retrieved 10 October 2014.
30. "Nehalem = i7: Intel unveils new Core processor brand". TG Daily. August 10, 2008. Retrieved February 10, 2016.
31. "Intel Pays A.M.D. $1.25 Billion to Settle Disputes". The New York Times. November 12, 2009. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
32. "First Intel next-gen laptops will be quad core - CNET". Cnet.com. Retrieved February 10, 2016.
33. "How Intel's 3D tech redefines the transistor (FAQ) - CNET". Cnet.com. Retrieved February 1, 2016.
34. "Intel's new fourth-gen 'Haswell' processors: What you need to know (FAQ) - CNET". Cnet.com. Retrieved February 10, 2016.
35. "Intel introduces Quark, a tiny chip for the internet of things and wearable computing". Theverge.com. Retrieved January 17, 2016.
36. "A 19-year-old just scored $1.25 million in venture funding for chip design". Itworld.com. Retrieved January 17, 2016.
37. "Nineteen-Year-Old Takes on Intel in a Bid to Make Computers Less Power-Hungry". Technologyreview.com. Retrieved January 17, 2016.