Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
motherboard to the expansion cards, power supplies, and system chassis.
But, to me, the real question is which company has been responsible for creating and inventing newer
and more recent PC hardware designs, interfaces, and standards? When I ask people that question, I
normally see some hesitation in their responses—some people say Microsoft (but it controls the
software, not the hardware), and some say HP or Dell, or they name a few other big-name system
manufacturers. Some, however, surmise the correct answer—Intel.
I can see why many people don't immediately realize this; I mean, how many people actually own an
Intel-brand PC? No, not just one that says
Intel Inside
on it (which refers only to the system having an
Intel processor), but a system that was designed and built by, or even purchased through, Intel.
Believe it or not, many people today do have Intel PCs!
Certainly, this does not mean that consumers have purchased their systems from Intel because Intel
does not sell complete PCs to end users. You can't currently order a system from Intel, nor can you
purchase an Intel-brand system from somebody else. What I am talking about are the major
components inside, including especially the motherboard as well as the core of the motherboard—the
chipset.
See
Chapter 4
,
“
Motherboards and Buses
,”
p.
155
.
How did Intel come to dominate the interior of our PCs? Intel has been the dominant PC processor
supplier since IBM chose the Intel 8088 CPU in the original IBM PC in 1981. By controlling the
processor, Intel naturally controlled the chips necessary to integrate its processors into system
designs. This naturally led Intel into the chipset business. It started its chipset business in 1989 with
the 82350 Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) chipset, and by 1993 it had become—
along with the debut of the Pentium processor—the largest-volume major motherboard chipset
supplier. Now I imagine Intel sitting there, thinking that it makes the processor and all the other chips
necessary to produce a motherboard, so why not just eliminate the middleman and make the entire
motherboard, too? The answer to this, and a real turning point in the industry, came about in 1994
when Intel became the largest-volume motherboard manufacturer in the world. By 1997, Intel made
more motherboards than the next eight largest motherboard manufacturers combined, with sales of
more than 30 million boards worth more than $3.6 billion!
After an industry downturn in 2001, Intel concentrated on its core competency of chip making and
began using Chinese contract manufacturers such as Foxconn to make Intel-branded motherboards.
Since then, contract manufacturers, such as Asus, Foxconn, ECS, MSI, and GIGABYTE, have
essentially taken over the market for motherboard manufacturing. Regardless of which company
actually manufactures the boards, the main part of any motherboard is the chipset, which contains the
majority of the motherboard circuitry. These days, about 80% of PCs on the market use Intel
processors, and the majority of those are plugged in to motherboards built using Intel chipsets.
Intel controls the PC hardware standard because it controls the PC motherboard and most of the
components on it. It not only makes many of the motherboards being used in systems today, but it also
supplies the majority of processors and motherboard chipsets to other motherboard manufacturers.
Intel also has had a primary hand in developing several PC hardware standards, such as the
following:
• Universal serial bus (USB) 1.1, 2.0, and 3.0 for connecting peripheral devices.
