Intel Inside — No More? Intel Everywhere

Author(s): Lo Zarantonello

Originally published on Towards AI.

The Rise And Fall Of Intel — An American Story Ready For A Plot Twist

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There was a time when “Intel Inside” was a sought-after sticker on your laptop.

Their famous “Intel Inside” marketing campaign in the early 1990s ensured everyone knew them, despite being a relatively unknown technical component.

I tried a laptop using AMD and told myself: Never again.

However, its great success also sparked the foundations of its current weaknesses.

The decision to focus on microprocessors in the late 1970s set Intel on a trajectory that would establish it as a tech giant for decades.

However, the same strategy pushed to keep manufacturing in-house and following a model known as “tick-tock”.

In brief, the “tick-tock” model was based on alternating between refining old designs and developing new ones, in other words, improving and innovating.

This worked fine until the direct performance gain slowed down. However, instead of changing strategy, Intel kept pursuing the same “tick-tock” model.

By the 2010s, competitors, like AMD, started leveraging external foundries like TSMC, which allowed them to rapidly innovate.

More companies and competitors decided to focus solely on chip design while outsourcing their manufacturing.

That exposed the cracks in Intel’s business model.

An increasing number of competitors and outsourcing models were not… Read the full blog for free on Medium.

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Published via Towards AI