Amd History

The main component to a computer is the processor.  The two companies that lead in producing processor chips for computers are Intel and AMD (Advanced Micro Devices).  These two companies have been competing with each other to get their product to the consumer.  Intel has been producing chips the longest and will remain producing for many years to come.

The website Computerworld defines a processor as, “A microprocessor is the heart of a modern computer, a chip made up of millions of transistors and other elements organized into specific functional operating units, including arithmetic units, cache memory and memory management, predictive logic and data movement.”  A processor is like the brain to a computer.  The processor passes instructions received probably via from a keyboard or a mouse and sends the instructions to where they belong.  In the website Basics, the webmaster gives an analogy, “if you cut your finger your nerves tell your brain, your brain decides that it hurts and sends back the appropriate response through your nerves to the correct part(s) of your body.”  It is like your mouth saying ouch and your finger hurts.

In 1983, processor chips were made with about thirty thousand transistors, but with current processor chips nowadays they are made with forty million transistors.  Computerworld explains, “Any computer program consists of many instructions for operating on data. A processor executes the program through four operating stages: fetch, decode, execute and retire.”  The fetch stage reads a program's instructions and any needed data into the processor.  The decode stage determines the purpose of the instruction and passes it to the appropriate hardware element.  The execution stage is where that hardware element, now freshly fed with an instruction and data, carries out the instruction.  The retire stage takes the results of the execution stage and places them into other processor registers or the computer's main memory. For example, the result of an add operation might be stored in memory for later use.

Intel was founded on July 18, 1968.  Their goals were to make semiconductor memory into a smaller size and greater performance.  An engineer at Intel designed a chip that retrieved its application instructions from semiconductor memory.  This became the first processor.  In 1981, Intel was chosen by IBM to use their processors in their computers.  Intel attracted IBM because of their “long-term commitment to the microprocessor product line and ability to manufacture in volume convinced IBM to choose the 8088” (The History of Intel, 30 Years of Innovation).  The two companies created the first PC (personal computer).

   AMD was founded in 1969 and its founder has been “toiling for months to pull together their scrappy start-up” (AMD-History).  AMD was able to produce their own products after moving to two rooms in the back of a rug cutting company in Santa Clara.  The early years of AMD’s products were “alternate-source devices, products obtained from other companies that were then redesigned for greater speed and efficiency” (AMD-History).  In 1975, AMD released their first processor, the 8080a.  Slowly AMD expanded throughout the world in such places as Malaysia and the Philippines.  Currently AMD is the top contender against Intel in the processor industry.

The battle against the two processor makers has only just escalated.  Intel announced that it will “slash prices some of its high-end microprocessors by as much as 50 percent” (Markowitz).  Consumers think it will put “put pressure on rival AMD and boost PC sales” (Markowitz).  Analysts believe “In an aggressive move to take back market share, we believe Intel is planning to detonate a price bomb on AMD by cutting prices about 50 percent on high-end P4 processors” (Markowitz).  The reason why Intel would do detonate a “price bomb” mainly because, “Since the beginning of the year, Intel has been aggressively pricing its products in order to stimulate demand and to fend off market share losses to AMD.