Vendor lineage
Intel - the processor in the control plane
Founded 1968 by Moore and Noyce; the x86 architecture, the first microprocessor, and the network interface everyone drives.
Intel was founded on 18 July 1968 by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, produced the first commercially available microprocessor in 1971, and defined the x86 architecture that most general-purpose computing still runs on.
Its place on a networking timeline is not the processor in a laptop. It is the processor in the control plane: the management CPU inside a switch, the appliance running a firewall or a load balancer, and the server that terminates the traffic at the end of it. A great deal of the equipment described elsewhere on this site is an x86 machine with specialised silicon beside it, and the operating system on the management processor is where the configuration lives.
The second place is the network interface. Intel Ethernet controllers are the reference implementation in practice: the drivers ship with every operating system, the behaviour is what documentation assumes, and a large amount of packet-processing software was written against them first.
Two of its decisions appear in the milestones on this site rather than here. The 4004 in 1971 is where the microprocessor begins, and the choice of Leixlip in 1989 for the first wafer fabrication plant outside the United States is one anchor of the Irish manufacturing story.
- Intel (Wikipedia): American semiconductor company founded 18 July 1968 by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce; developer of the x86 architecture and the 4004, the first commercially available microprocessor
- Intel 4004 (Wikipedia): announced November 1971
- Silicon Republic - Intel chose Leixlip in 1989 for its first wafer fabrication plant outside the United States