Intel Corporation (Intel) operates as a global integrated device manufacturer (IDM) of processor or central processing units (CPUs) and semiconductor solutions that it designs, develops, manufactures, markets, sells, supports, and services. The company also develops semiconductor fabrication process and packaging technologies and manufactures many of its semiconductor product offerings at geographically diverse network of fabrication and assembly and test facilities.
The company’s CPUs and rela...
Intel Corporation (Intel) operates as a global integrated device manufacturer (IDM) of processor or central processing units (CPUs) and semiconductor solutions that it designs, develops, manufactures, markets, sells, supports, and services. The company also develops semiconductor fabrication process and packaging technologies and manufactures many of its semiconductor product offerings at geographically diverse network of fabrication and assembly and test facilities.
The company’s CPUs and related solutions are incorporated in computing and related end products and services, and utilized globally by consumers, enterprises, governments, and educational organizations. The company’s customers primarily include original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), ODMs, cloud service providers, and other manufacturers and service providers, such as industrial and communication equipment manufacturers and other cloud service providers who buy its products through distributor, reseller, retail, and OEM channels throughout the world. The company markets and sells these products directly through its global sales and marketing organizations and indirectly through channel partners. The company manufactures its products at its fabrication and assembly and test facilities located throughout the world.
The company’s product offerings provide end-to-end solutions, scaling from data center to network, PCs, edge computing, and the emerging fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous driving, to serve an increasingly smart and connected world. Products, such as the company’s gaming CPUs, may be sold directly to end consumers, or they may be further integrated by its customers into end products, such as notebooks and storage servers. Combining some of these products—for example, integrating field-programmable gate array (FPGAs) with Intel Xeon processors in a data center solution—enables incremental synergistic value and performance.
Segments
The company operates through Client Computing Group (CCG), Data Center and AI (DCAI), Network and Edge (NEX), Mobileye, and Intel Foundry Services (IFS) segments.
Client Computing Group
This segment is committed to advancing PC experiences by delivering an annual cadence of leadership products and deepening its relationships with industry partners to co-engineer and deliver leading platform innovation. The company engages in an intentional effort to bring together the operating system, system architecture, hardware, and software application integration to enable industry-leading PC experiences. It embraces these opportunities by focusing its roadmap, delivering innovative PC capabilities, and designing advanced PC experiences. By doing this, the company helps continue to fuel innovation across the industry, providing a solid source of IP, scale, and cash flow for Intel.
Products and Competition
In 2023, the company introduced an update to client compute brands to make it easier for customers to identify the right client solutions for their compute needs. Those brands include Intel, Intel Core, and Intel Core Ultra.
The Intel Core Ultra processor family, which was launched at the end of 2023, delivers significant advancements in graphics, AI, and multi-threaded CPU performance and introduced the AI PC to the market. In the second half of 2024, the next-generation Intel Core Ultra 200V Series became its highest performance client processors, with increased battery life for mobile PCs. It also introduced the Intel Core Ultra 200S Series processors, catering to the desktop enthusiast market. The company remains committed to delivering the most advanced processing power to support the growing demands of AI, graphics, and multi-threaded workloads.
The company operates in a particularly competitive market. In processors, it competes with Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) and vendors who design applications processors based on ARM architecture, such as Apple Inc. (Apple) with its M series products and Qualcomm Inc. (Qualcomm) with its Snapdragon product.
Data Center and AI segment
DCAI delivers cutting-edge workload-optimized solutions to cloud service providers and enterprises, along with silicon devices for communications service providers, network and edge, and HPC customers. The company’s unique capabilities enable it to help solve its customers' most complex challenges with the depth and breadth of its hardware and software portfolio, advanced packaging, and at-scale manufacturing made possible through a resilient, global supply chain. The company’s global customers and partners encompass cloud hyperscalers, multinational corporations, small-and medium-sized enterprises, independent software vendors, systems integrators, communications service providers, and governments.
DCAI focuses on the AI ecosystem, developer tools, frameworks, networking and memory, technologies, and open standards to drive a scalable path forward. The company takes a system-level approach that supplies the necessary hardware and software optimized for power and performance. Its technology is differentiated at the system level and in high-growth workloads based on its integrated hardware acceleration engines and software. For example, architected into Intel Xeon processors are Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel AMX) for AI acceleration; Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX), providing enclaves of protected memory designed to deliver enhanced security for sensitive data; and Intel Crypto Acceleration, which is designed to deliver breakthrough performance across cryptographic algorithms.
Products
The company’s products and services include:
A portfolio of hardware, including Intel Xeon processors, Intel Gaudi processors, and a software suite to enable the ecosystem and deliver solutions, including enterprise retrieval-augmented generation
Platform enabling and validation in partnership with ODMs, OEMs, cloud service providers (CSPs), and independent software vendors.
Optimized solutions for leading workloads, such as AI, cryptography, security, storage, and networking, leveraging differentiated features supporting diverse compute environments.
The company provides its customers with an extensive portfolio of silicon and software products, engineered to deliver workload-optimized performance. The company’s hardware portfolio comprises CPUs, GPUs, domain-specific accelerators, and FPGAs, designed to support the performance, agility, and security that its customers demand. The deployment of the company’s silicon platforms is accelerated by a software development environment that enables workload mobility across its heterogeneous architectures and enables developers to execute their workloads on the hardware that best meets application requirements.
The Intel Xeon Scalable processor family delivers advanced CPUs for the data center, the network, and the edge, driving performance, manageability, and security with differentiated features and capabilities. In 2024, the company launched the Intel Xeon 6 processors with Efficient-cores (or E-Cores) and Performance-cores (or P-cores). Its E-core processors feature single-threaded cores for scale-out, parallel workloads, while P-core processors feature hyperthreaded cores and built-in matrix engines that are designed for more compute-intensive workloads, such as AI.
The company’s AI processor offerings consist of Gaudi AI accelerators. In 2024, it launched the Intel Gaudi 3 AI accelerators with enhanced memory bandwidth, flexibility, and AI compute capabilities. The company developed Falcon Shores as its next-generation AI accelerator to succeed the Gaudi product line; however, based on customer feedback company utilizes it as an internal test chip rather than bring it to market. It is focusing its efforts on the development of Jaguar Shores AI accelerator, previously targeted to succeed Falcon Shores, as its first generally programmable GPU AI accelerator offering to customers.
The ubiquity of Intel Xeon in the installed base, along with the company’s heterogeneous compute solutions combined with software that unlocks the value of its hardware, enable its customers to develop highly differentiated solutions. The company’s integrated approach has created significant value for Intel, its customers, and its partners by helping it mitigate risks, reduce costs, build brand value, and identify new market opportunities to apply its technology to address its customers' and society's most complex issues.
Competition
The company’s competitors include Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), providers of GPU products, such as NVIDIA Corporation (NVIDIA), companies developing their own custom silicon, and new entrants and incumbents developing ARM- and RISC-V-based products customized for specific data center workloads. The company expects this competitive landscape to continue.
Network and Edge segment
NEX transforms the world's networks and edge compute systems from fixed-function hardware to general-purpose compute, acceleration, and networking devices running cloud native software on programmable hardware. The company works with partners and customers to deliver and deploy intelligent edge platforms that allow developers to achieve agility and to drive automation using AI for efficient operations while securing the integrity of their data at the edge. The company has a broad portfolio of hardware and software platforms, tools, and ecosystem partnerships for the rapid digital transformation happening from the cloud to the edge. The company is leveraging its core strengths in compute, connectivity, software, and manufacturing at scale to grow traditional markets and to accelerate entry into emerging ones.
The company’s network and edge solutions unleashes the power of intelligent edge solutions for its customers and move the world's networks to a software infrastructure that runs on Intel technologies by providing edge-optimized, AI-enabled compute and connectivity solutions to run every workload at the edge, between the cloud and the end user, and deploying software platforms that enable developers to build, deploy, run, manage, connect, and secure distributed edge infrastructure, applications, and edge AI across several verticals, such as industrials, federal, aerospace, retail, healthcare, education, and smart cities.
Products
The company speeds the deployment of network and edge computing solutions based on its open software frameworks, AI-enabled platform solutions, and edge and network-optimized broad silicon portfolio to address a wide range of applications across several markets.
On-Premises Edge: More than just providing silicon, the company partners with companies to design and deliver solutions to help a wide range of customers transform their businesses and take advantage of the rapidly increasing number of connected and intelligent devices. The company develops high-performance, AI-enabled compute platforms that solve for technology and business use cases that scale across several industries, such as retail, education, manufacturing, energy, healthcare, and medical.
The company delivers edge-optimized AI-enabled platforms for edge applications based on its Intel Xeon, Intel Core, and Intel Atom processor portfolio, which reduces operational complexity for the company’s customers and helps its customers create, store, and process data at the edge so they can analyze it faster and act on it sooner. The company also builds differentiated networking offerings that keep pace with industry speeds and delivers unique features needed for the intelligent edge, such as networking offloads, time-sensitive networking, and scalable reliable transport.
Enterprise Networking: Enterprises are evolving their networks to connect new and varying environments, host services from anywhere between cloud and edge, deliver heightened service levels, and handle growing volumes of devices and data. The company is leading the world's shift to run networking workloads in software and create network function virtualization to provide its customers with more efficient, cost-effective, and programmable platforms that enable secure, agile, and reliable networking solutions from edge to cloud. The company works with its ecosystem partners of over 500 network builders to help enterprises optimize their networks with right-sized compute and connectivity requirements for current and future needs.
Telecommunication Networks: The company leads 5G core network deployments, demonstrating that 5G base stations can be almost entirely built from software running on Intel Xeon processors with Intel vRAN Boost. It continues to drive the transformation from fixed-function networks onto Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Intel Xeon D processors coupled with its FlexCore and FlexRAN software. The company’s customers are tier-one global communication service providers and their equipment suppliers. Its software-based cloud RAN platform is designed to allow operators to deploy the fastest cloud-native 5G infrastructure quickly and efficiently at scale to meet the needs of their end customers.
Cloud Networking: The company’s cloud customers require uncompromised data center network performance and reliability driven by increased networking investments to support AI cluster deployments. The company addresses these requirements by providing its open-standards-based NICs and IPUs. The IPU, a new class of product, is an open and programmable compute platform that frees up more compute cycles for customers by running infrastructure workloads in a separate, secure, and isolated set of CPU cores.
Intel Foundry
Intel Foundry, comprising technology development, manufacturing and foundry services, seeks to deliver the systems foundry capabilities to support Intel Products and external customers. As the stewards of Moore's Law, the company continues to innovate and advance world-class silicon process and advanced packaging technologies. Its foundry offerings benefit from several key advantages: robust design ecosystem with key industry partners; systems of chips capabilities; and secure, resilient, and sustainable supply chain. Its foundry is built on the foundation of silicon process and advanced packaging technology offerings and enables co-optimized solutions for the AI era. It strengthens the resilience of the global semiconductor supply chain for leading-edge and mature node semiconductor products by investing in geographically balanced and more sustainable manufacturing capacity. As a foundry for the AI era, Intel Foundry brings together these critical components to help drive the next phase of technology innovation.
Products and Services
Intel Foundry combines technology, manufacturing, supply chain, and systems capabilities to enable systems to be optimized for their workloads while providing resilience and sustainability in the supply chain. Intel Foundry delivers leading-edge process technology and to build out offerings of mature process nodes for third parties. The company’s factory network provides geographically balanced manufacturing capacity. Intel Foundry enables Intel Products and external customers to benefit from advanced technologies, systems capabilities, and manufacturing network, and it expects to achieve volume production of products on 2nm node, Intel 18A, in 2025.
The company seeks to address the transformational shift in the semiconductor industry being driven by AI and the demand for ever-increasing computation power by providing leading foundry capabilities to support Intel Products and external customers, delivered from a resilient, secure, and more sustainable supply chain. Intel Foundry's offerings are foundational and consist of advanced process technologies enabled by an ecosystem of electronic design automation tools, intellectual property, and design services from vendors used by external customers. This ecosystem enables external customers to design with Intel technologies as they would with other foundries. The systems of chips capabilities include architecture, advanced packaging technologies, software, and services to accelerate time to market, and driving standards to improve system performance and power consumption.
Intel Foundry's process technologies available to external customers are expected to include its upcoming Intel 18A process featuring RibbonFET (gate-all-around) and PowerVia (back-side power delivery) as expected industry firsts; new Intel 3 process using EUV lithography; its established Intel 7 and Intel 16 process technologies; and a new 12nm foundry process technology the company is developing in collaboration with United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC). It announced an extension to roadmap beyond Intel 18A with the introduction of Intel 14A. Intel Foundry's advanced semiconductor assembly and test offerings include families of advanced technologies for packaging single chips or combining multiple chips together in a package, adjacent to each other, stacked on top of each other, or through a combination thereof. In addition to core packaging technologies, it has differentiated capabilities to design and produce complex packaged parts with optimal performance, power, and cost at high yield. The company continues to drive the technologies, capabilities, and standards needed to optimize systems of chips, including the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express standard for communication between chips in a system, which it demonstrated in silicon in 2023.
Competition
The competitors to Intel Foundry are primarily semiconductor foundries that focus on delivering wafers and packaging technologies from fabrication plants based primarily in Asia, and include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Samsung, Global Foundries, United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). It competes with TSMC and Samsung in the advanced process technology marketplace.
Customers
The company’s sells its products primarily to OEMs, ODMs, and cloud service providers. ODMs provide design and manufacturing services to branded and unbranded private-label resellers. In addition, the company’s customers include other manufacturers and service providers, such as industrial and communication equipment manufacturers and other cloud service providers who buy its products through distributor, reseller, retail, and OEM channels throughout the world.
Intellectual Property Rights
The company owns and develops significant IP and related IP rights around the world that support its products, services, R&D, and other activities and assets. Its IP portfolio includes patents, copyrights, trade secrets, trademarks, mask works, and other rights. The company actively seek to protect global IP rights and deter unauthorized use of IP and other assets.
The company has obtained patents in the U.S. and other countries. Because of the fast pace of innovation and product development, products are often obsolete before the patents related to them expire, and in some cases, products may be obsolete before the patents are granted. As the company expands its product offerings, particularly around foundry business, it also seeks to extend its patent development efforts. In addition to developing patents based on its own R&D efforts, company may purchase or license patents from third parties.
The software that company distributes, including software embedded in products, is entitled to copyright and other IP protection. To distinguish products from its competitors' products, the company has obtained trademarks and trade names for its products and maintains cooperative advertising programs with customers to promote brands and to identify products containing genuine Intel components. The company also protect details about its processes, products, and strategies as trade secrets.
Sales and Marketing
Customers
The company designs, markets, sells, and services CPUs and other semiconductor solutions substantially through Intel Products business that are manufactured by Intel Foundry business and other suppliers and are incorporated in computing and related end products and services, and utilized globally by consumers, enterprises, governments, and educational organizations. It sells products primarily to OEMs, ODMs, and cloud service providers. ODMs provide design and manufacturing services to branded and unbranded private-label resellers. In addition, its customers include other manufacturers and service providers, such as industrial and communication equipment manufacturers and cloud service providers who buy products through distributor, reseller, retail, and OEM channels throughout the world. The company’s worldwide reseller sales channel consists of thousands of indirect customers—systems builders that purchase Intel processors and other products from distributors. Certain of its microprocessors and other products are also available in direct retail outlets.
Sales Arrangements
The company’s products are sold through distribution channels throughout the world. Sales of products are frequently made via purchase order acknowledgments that contain standard terms and conditions covering matters such as pricing, payment terms, and warranties, as well as indemnities for issues specific to products, such as patent and copyright indemnities. Because company’s customers generally order from it on a purchase order basis, they can typically cancel, change, or delay product purchase commitments with little or no notice to the company and without penalty. From time to time, it may enter into additional agreements with customers covering, for example, changes from standard terms and conditions, new product development and marketing, and private-label branding. Its sales are routinely made using electronic and web-based processes that allows customers to review inventory availability and track the progress of specific goods ordered. Pricing on products may vary based on volumes ordered and other factors. It also offers discounts, rebates, and other incentives to customers to increase acceptance of products and technology.
Distribution
Distributors typically handle a wide variety of products, including those that compete with the company’s products, and fill orders for many customers. Customers may place orders directly with the company or through distributors. It has several distribution warehouses that are located in proximity to key customers.
Marketing
The company’s global marketing objectives is to build a strong, well-known, differentiated, and meaningful Intel corporate brand that drives preference with businesses and consumers, and to offer a limited number of meaningful and valuable brands in its portfolio to aid businesses and consumers in making informed choices about technology purchases. The Intel Core processor family and Intel Xeon trademarks make up key CPU brands. This year the company introduced its new Intel Core Ultra processors, powering the latest AI PCs, and its Intel Xeon 6 processors, built with AI acceleration in every core. Its foundry services business offers leading-edge packaging and process technology, geographically balanced manufacturing capacity, and IP portfolio.
In addition to bringing new products to market in 2024, the company focuses on building brand awareness and driving demand through own direct marketing and co-marketing programs with partners. Its direct marketing activities primarily include advertising through digital and social media, as well as consumer and trade events, industry and consumer communications, and public relations. It markets to consumer and commercial audiences. The key messaging reinforces the Intel brand pillars of exceptionally engineered, collaboratively innovative, and responsibly built, while emphasizing its ability to bring AI everywhere across data center, cloud, edge, and PC.
Certain customers participate in cooperative advertising and marketing programs. These cooperative advertising and marketing programs broaden the reach of its brands beyond the scope of own direct marketing. Certain customers are licensed to place Intel logos on computing devices containing microprocessors and processor technologies, and to use brands in their marketing activities. The program partially reimburses customers for marketing activities for products featuring Intel brands, subject to customers meeting defined criteria. These marketing activities primarily include advertising through digital and social media and television, as well as press relations.
Trademarks
Intel, Arc, Intel Atom, Intel Core, Intel Evo, FlexRAN, Gaudi, the Intel logo, Intel Optane, MAX, Movidius, OpenVINO, the OpenVINO logo, Thunderbolt and the Thunderbolt logo, Intel vPro, and Xeon are trademarks of the company or its subsidiaries.
Research and Development
The company incurred research and development expenses of $16.5 billion in 2024.
History
Intel Corporation was founded in 1968. The company was incorporated in California in 1968 and reincorporated in Delaware in 1989.
