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Intel's longtime President and CEO Andy Grove has died. He was 79, and was Intel's first hire. Born in pre-war Hungary, he survived both the Nazi occupation and Communist rule to immigrate to America at the age of 20.
Present at Intel's 1968 founding with Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, Andy Grove became Intel's President in 1979 and CEO in 1987. He served as Chairman of the Board from 1997 to 2005. Both during his time at Intel and in retirement, Grove was one of the most influential figures in technology and business, writing best-selling books and widely cited articles, and speaking out on an array of prominent public issues.
"We are deeply saddened by the passing of former Intel Chairman and CEO Andy Grove," said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. "Andy made the impossible happen, time and again, and inspired generations of technologists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders."
Grove played a critical role in the decision to move Intel's focus from memory chips to microprocessors and led the firm's transformation into a widely recognized consumer brand. Under his leadership Intel produced the chips, including the 386 and Pentium, which helped usher in the PC era. The company also increased annual revenues from $1.9 billion to more than $26 billion.
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Technology will always win. You can delay technology by legal interference, but technology will flow around legal barriers.
(Score: 2) by dltaylor on Tuesday March 22 2016, @09:02AM
People may not know, or may have forgotten, that Intel is only where where they are today because back in the 70s, they were failing miserably.
The 8080 was dog slow, and very inefficient (the NEC V20 was pin and opcode compatible, but significantly faster). About the only thing they well, at the time, was their EPROM line.
What saved Intel was a decision by IBM purchasing to nix the choice of a really sweet little CPU, the Zilog Z8000, because Intel was so desperate for business that they would practically give the 8088 away. The Z8000 had a register set like the 360 (8 orthogonal registers), and could run more powerful OS, like UNIX Version 6. Engineering wanted that one, but IBM would have had no significant leverage on a company owed by an oil company that could buy countries (Exxon).
So, instead of good CPUs proliferating, we have the architecture of a piece of junk that was about the worst possible that could still run at all.