Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Santa Clara, California and has been in the semiconductor manufacturing business for decades. Since launching their first processor (also referred to as a central processing unit, or CPU for short) in 1971, Intel (which stands for "INTegrated ELectronics") has since made significant technological advances in chip design throughout the years to bring new generations of processors to the masses.
While competitors have come and gone over the decades, Intel stood as the leader in the processor market. With each generation, processors became more powerful and faster. By the early 21st century, Intel's processors were found in more than 80% of the computers worldwide. While it is known for their microprocessors, Intel also manufacturers wireless products, storage and memory devices, networking equipment, and more. The illustrated timeline below summarizes the major families of microprocessors Intel has produced since launching their first 4004 CPU in 1971.
Intel's first processor, this 4-bit design was used in Nippon Calculating Machine Corporation Busicom 141-PF printing calculator.
Just five months after the release of the Intel 4004, Intel announced the 8008 processor, the first 8-bit processor with twice the performance as its predecessor.
Intel's first commercial 16-bit processor and is considered to be the chip that launched the era of the successful x86 architecture family of processors.
Powering the IBM 5150 (aka IBM Personal Computer or IBM PC) and clones, this processor was identical to the 8086 with the exception of its 8-bit external data bus width.
The Tandy 2000 computer was among the first PCs that used the Intel 80186 processor.
Intel's first 32-bit processor that has a 32-bit external bus and a 32-bit address bus. In the i386 processor family, the 'DX' stood for 'Double word eXternal' referring to the 32-bit external bus.
Lower cost variant of the 80386DX that has a 16-bit external bus and a 24-bit address bus. In the i386 processor family, the 'SX' stood for 'Single word eXternal' referring to the 16-bit external bus.
In the i486 processor family, the 'DX' refers to a 486 processor with an integrated math coprocessor.
Designed for laptops, this a low-power variant of the 80386DX processor with built-in power management feature.
Lower cost variant of the 80486DX that has the internal floating point unit (FPU) (aka math coprocessor) disabled. In the i486 processor family, the 'SX' refers to a 486 processor without an integrated math coprocessor.
Designed for laptops, this was a low-power variant of the 80486DX processor.
Designed for laptops, this was a low-power variant of the 80486DX processor.
This 6th generation x86 processor was targeted towards servers, high-end workstations, and supercomputers such as the ASIC Red.
Aimed at lower cost computers, this was Intel's response to competitors such as AMD and Cyrix to regain shares in the low-end budget computer market.
The Intel Pentium III family consists of a few sub-families targeting different segments of computer market:
The Intel Xeon family of processors were targeted towards business servers and workstations.
The Intel Atom line are low-power consuming, low-cost, and low-performance processors designed for netbooks, IoT devices, or other devices or systems that are function-specific.