Intel Corporation

In 1998 Andrew Grove, whose engineering knowledge and aggressive drive had helped build Intel into a global powerhouse, resigned from his position as the company’s chief executive officer. He remained chairman of Intel’s board of directors. Also that year, Intel bought the semiconductor manufacturing operations of Digital Equipment Corporation for about $625 million as part of an agreement that settled a patent dispute between the two companies.

In June 1998 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an antitrust suit against Intel. The suit charged Intel with abusing its power in the market for microprocessors by withholding key technical information from computer manufacturers who had refused to license patents to Intel. In early 1999 Intel and the FTC settled the lawsuit before going to trial. However, the FTC continued to investigate other aspects of Intel’s use of market power.

In 2000 Intel debuted a 1-gigahertz (1,000-megahertz) Pentium III just days after longtime industry rival Advanced Micro Devices announced it had developed the first-ever microprocessor of that speed. A year later Intel introduced the Pentium 4 processor, capable of operating at a speed of 2.5 gigahertz, according to an independent performance test conducted in 2002. In 2003 Intel introduced its Centrino mobile technology, which provides computer users with a wireless link to the Internet through Wi-Fi networks.

In 2007 Intel formally unveiled the Teraflop Research Chip, also known as Polaris, which is capable of performing more than one trillion operations per second while drawing only 62 watts of power, comparable to a low-wattage light bulb. The breakthrough technology would give ordinary computer users the power of a supercomputer, like the one Intel helped build for the U.S. Department of Energy in 1996. That supercomputer, however, took up 230 sq m (2,500 sq ft) of space and required 500 kilowatts of power to run and 500 kilowatts of power to cool. The new chip, which measures 275 sq mm (0.43 sq in), would require a radical breakthrough in software for it to be commercially viable and was not expected to go into production until 2012 at the earliest.

See also Microprocessor: History of the Microprocessor; Computer: History.