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10 Computer System

The Santa Clara design team at Intel embarked on developing a 64-bit successor to the x86 architecture called IA-64 or Itanium in 1993. The first attempt was dropped in 1994 but revived with HP, though Intel took over development. The Itanium was finally introduced in 2001 but did not meet expectations for legacy code performance and failed to compete with the x86-64 extension from AMD. In 2017, Intel announced Itanium 9700 would be the last Itanium processor produced.

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11 views

10 Computer System

The Santa Clara design team at Intel embarked on developing a 64-bit successor to the x86 architecture called IA-64 or Itanium in 1993. The first attempt was dropped in 1994 but revived with HP, though Intel took over development. The Itanium was finally introduced in 2001 but did not meet expectations for legacy code performance and failed to compete with the x86-64 extension from AMD. In 2017, Intel announced Itanium 9700 would be the last Itanium processor produced.

Uploaded by

iamshakha123
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Santa Clara design team embarked in 1993 on a successor to the x86 architecture, codenamed

"P7". The first attempt was dropped a year later but quickly revived in a cooperative program
with Hewlett-Packard engineers, though Intel soon took over primary design responsibility. The
resulting implementation of the IA-64 64-bit architecture was the Itanium, finally introduced in June
2001. The Itanium's performance running legacy x86 code did not meet expectations, and it failed to
compete effectively with x86-64, which was AMD's 64-bit extension of the 32-bit x86 architecture
(Intel uses the name Intel 64, previously EM64T). In 2017, Intel announced that the Itanium 9700
series (Kittson) would be the last Itanium chips produced.[146][147]

The Hillsboro team designed the Willamette processors (initially code-named P68), which were
marketed as the Pentium 4.

During this period, Intel undertook two major supporting advertising campaigns. The first campaign,
the 1991 "Intel Inside" marketing and branding campaign, is widely known and has become
synonymous with Intel itself. The idea of "ingredient branding" was new at the time, with
only NutraSweet and a few others making attempts to do so.[148] One of the key architects of the
marketing team was the head of the microprocessor division, David House.[149] He coined the slogan
"Intel Inside".[150] This campaign established Intel, which had been a component supplier little-known
outside the PC industry, as a household name.

The second campaign, Intel's Systems Group, which began in the early 1990s, showcased
manufacturing of PC motherboards, the main board component of a personal computer, and the one
into which the processor (CPU) and memory (RAM) chips are plugged.[151] The Systems Group
campaign was lesser known than the Intel Inside campaign.

Shortly after, Intel began manufacturing fully configured "white box" systems for the dozens of PC
clone companies that rapidly sprang up.[152] At its peak in the mid-1990s, Intel manufactured over
15% of all PCs, making it the third-largest supplier at the time. [citation needed]

During the 1990s, Intel Architecture Labs (IAL) was responsible for many of the hardware
innovations for the PC, including the PCI Bus, the PCI Express (PCIe) bus, and Universal Serial
Bus (USB). IAL's software efforts met with a more mixed fate; its video and graphics software was
important in the development of software digital video,[citation needed] but later its efforts were largely
overshadowed by competition from Microsoft. The competition between Intel and Microsoft was
revealed in testimony by then IAL Vice-president Steven McGeady at the Microsoft antitrust
trial (United States v. Microsoft Corp.).

Pentium flaw[edit]
Main article: Pentium FDIV bug

In June 1994, Intel engineers discovered a flaw in the floating-point math subsection of
the P5 Pentium microprocessor. Under certain data-dependent conditions, the low-order bits of the
result of a floating-point division would be incorrect. The error could compound in subsequent
calculations. Intel corrected the error in a future chip revision, and under public pressure it issued a
total recall and replaced the defective Pentium CPUs (which were limited to some 60, 66, 75, 90,
and 100 MHz models[153]) on customer request.

The bug was discovered independently in October 1994 by Thomas Nicely, Professor of
Mathematics at Lynchburg College. He contacted Intel but received no response. On October 30, he
posted a message about his finding on the Internet.[154] Word of the bug spread quickly and reached
the industry press. The bug was easy to replicate; a user could enter specific numbers into the
calculator on the operating system. Consequently, many users did not accept Intel's statements that
the error was minor and "not even an erratum". During Thanksgiving, in 1994, The New York
Times ran a piece by journalist John Markoff spotlighting the error. Intel changed its position and
offered to replace every chip, quickly putting in place a large end-user support organization. This
resulted in a $475 million charge against Intel's 1994 revenue.[155] Dr. Nicely later learned that Intel
had discovered the FDIV bug in its own testing a few months before him (but had decided not to
inform customers).[156]

The "Pentium flaw" incident, Intel's response to it, and the surrounding media coverage propelled
Intel from being a technology supplier generally unknown to most computer users to a household
name. Dovetailing with an uptick in the "Intel Inside" campaign, the episode is considered to have
been a positive event for Intel, changing some of its business practices to be more end-user focused
and generating substantial public awareness, while avoiding a lasting negative impression. [157]

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