Intel Marks 20th Anniversary Of The IBM Personal Computer

From the "Black Curtain of Secrecy" to the Engine of Today's Extended PC Era, Intel Processors Have Driven Two Decades of Progress and Computing Power

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Intel engineers sat at one side of the table, separated from the team of IBM product developers by a dense black curtain. From time to time, the Intel engineers instructed the IBM team to move a probe over their design mock-up, then took oscilloscope readings to help de-bug a product they couldn't see, or theoretically, even know existed.

That day, 20 years ago, was unquestionably the most mysterious moment in the product development process cloaked in secrecy and fraught with intrigue, according to Earl Whetstone.

"They never told us what they were developing," recalls Whetstone, who as a young Intel salesman sold IBM on the idea of designing its hush-hush product around the then-new Intel 8088 processor. "We were working in the dark."

About six months before the product's August 1981 release, IBM's plans became clear. Still, adds Whetstone, who is now vice president of sales and market development for Intel's Home Products Group, "None of us had any sense of how big the PC would become."

Intel commemorates the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the IBM Personal Computer (PC) as a historic milestone. Powered by the 8088 Intel microprocessor, the IBM PC marked a fundamental turning point.

"The two decades of progress since 1981 make it clear that the PC has revolutionized the way people communicate, work, learn and play," said Intel chairman Andrew S. Grove. "And rapidly evolving Intel processors will continue to make PCs capable of things that people could scarcely imagine a year or two earlier."

Today, for example, a state-of-the-art Intel® Pentium® 4 processor can equip home PC users to digitize their favorite CD music tracks, process images, edit digital home movies and interact with 3-D environments - scenarios that would have seemed like science fiction 20 years ago. The expanding online universe offers even more rationale for people to have a powerful PC.

"Soon, one billion PCs will be connected to the Internet," said Craig Barrett, Intel president and chief executive officer. "This pending milestone points to consumers' continued reliance on a connected high-performance PC as the gateway to rich, multimedia Internet and entertainment experiences."

Then and Now Computing: A 20-Year Comparison
Two decades of progress have made a remarkable difference in personal computing. The original 1981 IBM PC base model offered a monochrome monitor and no hard drive. It sported a 4.77MHz Intel 8088 CPU, a single 5.25-inch floppy drive with 160K of capacity, and 64K of RAM (expandable to 256K). The accompanying software was Spartan and text-based, and the only sound derived from a tiny on-board speaker that emitted beeps and crude tones.

The early applications that this PC drove were similarly primitive: word processing for creating and editing documents, basic spreadsheets for keeping accounting ledgers, simple business and personal databases, and rudimentary educational software and games.

The 1981 model, monochrome PC cost approximately $3,000 (U.S.), equivalent to approximately $5,700 (U.S.) in today's dollars. The small number of consumers who opted for a color monitor and graphics card paid about $4,500 (U.S.).

Today, by contrast, consumers can buy a PC with a state-of-the-art Intel Pentium 4 processor with at least a 40GB or larger hard drive, 128MB of RAM, and a color monitor for under $1,200 (U.S.). They can also buy a super deluxe PC with a Pentium 4 processor, a high-resolution color monitor, and a CD burner or DVD drive for under $1,600 (U.S.). Both of these systems also boast photo-realistic color graphics, animation, movie playback and exceptional stereo sound. The performance differential is equally impressive: The Pentium 4 processor 1.7GHz core runs at a clock speed 300 times - or 30,000 percent - faster than the original 1981 IBM PC's processor.

But the most compelling element of this 20-year comparison is what the latest PCs empower people to do. Today's software, running on a Pentium 4 processor-based system, opens the door to an entirely new dimension of experiences. For example, Pentium 4 processor-based systems combined with high-speed Internet connectivity deliver high-resolution images for surfing the Web, editing and managing digital pictures and movies, and playing life-like 3D games. Moreover, a modern Pentium 4 processor-based PC can support an array of wired and wireless digital devices that extend its power throughout the home to make the consumer computing experience ever more valuable.

Four Eras of Expanding Benefits
The PC industry, spurred by IBM's business move 20 years ago, has enjoyed striking success. Industry observers estimate that PCs are in 60 percent of U.S. homes today. In the past 15 years, more PCs have been purchased in the United States than automobiles.

The PC industry has evolved through four eras in its 20-year history. The decade following the 1981 debut of the IBM PC is viewed as the era of productivity enhancement. From word processing to spreadsheets and simple databases, and from educational software to the first desktop publishing applications, PCs helped people become more efficient and productive throughout the 1980s, especially in the world of business.

The emergence of multimedia in the early 1990s signaled a new era of personal computing. Sound cards, speakers and CD-ROM drives provided passage to the world of entertainment, including PC gaming and multimedia-enhanced "edutainment" software. The Intel® Pentium® processor served as the engine of this multimedia revolution by making it easy for users to incorporate speech, sound, handwriting and photographic images. The popularity of multimedia helped make PCs as common in the home setting as they had been in the business sector.

The third phase, the Internet era of personal computing, debuted roughly halfway through the 1990s, marked by the mainstream deployment of Web browsers. Consumers quickly embraced Internet-connected PCs as a point-and-click way to surf the world, gaining access to everything from global e-mail to broadcast news, stock quotes, reference material and downloadable images. The Intel® Pentium® II and Pentium® III processors powered PCs through this third stage of their evolution.

The latest wave on the PC continuum coincided roughly with the turn of the century. The "Extended PC Era" is where the Intel Pentium 4 processor-based PC is the center of the digital world and extends its value throughout the home environment. In this emerging model, exciting new devices such as personal digital assistants, digital cameras, digital video recorders, MP3 audio players, DVD drives, CD-RW drives, scanners, e-books, PC-enhanced toys, cell phones and wireless Web tablets link to the Internet-connected PC and capitalize on its power and versatility.

An Eye to the Future
Today, the average desktop computer puts more power in the hands of consumers than the U.S. government first used to send men to the moon. However, continued innovations in processor technology and software development ensure that PC evolution will not come to a standstill at the 20-year milestone.

By the end of this decade, experts believe PCs will have evolved by nearly another order of magnitude, going from today's high mark of 1.7 billion cycles per second to as much as 10 billion cycles per second. Intel expects this next power leap to set the stage for a new era of computing in which, for example, PCs can listen to spoken commands and respond instantly.

"As digital consumer devices evolve, they will migrate toward more of the PC's capabilities and blend into the PC environment, enhancing and extending the home PC," explains Intel President and CEO Craig Barrett. "In the Extended PC Era, the home PC will be tasked to do even more, and consumers will be at the center of their own Internet experiences."

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