Intel? Who? Never heard of them! I always find it interesting the mix of presenting companies that Gestalt IT seems to get for their field day events – a lot may think its just for startups trying to get their name out – but with Intel, the 40+ year old tech giant involved I think we can say that’s pretty much debunked! And this isn’t their first either, Intel has presented at 3 Storage Field Day events and a couple of Networking Field Day events as well! So you can say they are well versed on the format….
Its’ kind of hard to do a preview post for Intel as they have been around for so long and have their hands in so many parts of the datacenter – I mean, they could talk about so many things. Aside from the well known processors, they could talk about SSD’s, chipsets, caching, networking – pretty much anything and everything. Since Virtualization Field Day has been renamed to Tech Field Day we can expect any of this, or anything else from Intel.
[symple_box color=”yellow” fade_in=”false” float=”center” text_align=”left” width=””]Disclaimer: As a Tech Field Day 12 delegate all of my flight, travel, accommodations, eats, and drinks are paid for. However I did not receive any compensation nor am I required to write anything in regards to the event or the presenting companies. All that said, this is done at my own discretion.[/symple_box]
With that said let’s just have a look at the history of Intel rather than guess what they may talk about as I’m always interested in how companies form, especially those that were their in the very beginnings of this crazy IT world we live in now. I always picture some kind of scene from Mad Men or Halt and Catch Fire! 🙂
My Coles Notes of Wikipedia 😉
So yeah, Intel, founded in 1968 by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce – Initially when selecting a name the combination of Moore-Noyce was quickly rejected, sounding too much like more noise 🙂 – instead, Intel, short for Integrated Electronics was chosen – and after paying a hotel brand which had the rights to the name a whopping $15000 the name has stuck – for 48 years! Their first commercial chip, the 4004 contained 2300 transistors – put that into perspective with the 10-core Xeon i7 Haswell with its 2,600,000,000 transistors! My how the times have changed – and if that isn’t enough take a look at some of the money surrounding the company. When Intel initially IPO’d in 1971, they did so at an evaluation of 6.8 million, their Q3 2016 revenue – 15.8 Billion!
Intel plugged away in the early years generating most their revenue from random-access memory circuits, pumping chips into the DRAM, SRAM and ROM markets. What would turn out to be their bread and butter, the microprocessor, wasn’t really on the radar – that is until the early 80’s or so when IBM started to use the 80286. After that its a story we know all to well, the 80386, 486, Pentium and so on and so forth!
Anyways, that’s enough of my Wikipedia paraphrasing – yeah, Intel has been around a loooong time and have pivoted many times, surviving it all – check out some cool facts about the company here if you are still interested (Did you know they pioneered the cubicle?)! I’ve never been part of a Field Day event where Intel has presented (alone) so I’m interested to see what they have to talk about – If you want to follow along as well keep your eyes on the official landing page for Tech Field Day 12 here – and use the hashtag #TFD12 come November
