The Morphing of Intel's Monopoly

By SemiWiki

May 9, 2013

It was a generation ago that Intel, less than three years old has created the three fundamental building blocks of the compute era: the DRAM, the EPROM and the Microprocessor, an incredible feat of innovation by any measure. Manufacturing yield, not power or performance determined success of failure and in the first two decades 2^nd sourcing was required for end customers to adopt the new products. Intel, though, lost control to a throng of well-capitalized DRAM competitors and would be a footnote in history if IBM had not selected the 8088 for the original PC and allowed Intel to pursue a sole source strategy. History is once again knocking at the door as the company returns to a manufacturing centricity that looks to remain a sole source supplier for the mobile computing era while leveraging its assets for complementary partners, especially those who service the Data Center build out. The transition from Paul Otellini to Brian Krzanich and Renee James will signal something even greater though, it will be the transformation of Intel to a monopoly not of architecture but one based on software.

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