Tim Jackson - Inside Intel

COPYRIGHT COPYRIGHT DEDICATION PROLOGUE: A Half-Billion-Dollar Mistake PART ONE · INNOVATION 1 The Odds-On Favourite 2 2,000 Starts a Week 3 The Third and Fourth Men 4 Into the Potato Patch 5 A Saviour from Bucks County 6 The Rebels 7 Yellow Snow 8 The Microprocessor 9 Public Company 10 Second Source 11 Turning Failure to Profit 12 A New Standard PART TWO · DOMINATION 13 Borovoy Wins a Patent Battle 14 A Competitor on the Horizon 15 Penang Burning 16 Gopen Beats the Union 17 The Stop-Gap 18 Marriages and Divorces 19 Organization and Alpha Particles 20 The Microma Mistake 21 Crush! 22 Whetstone’s Design Win PART THREE · EXCLUSION 23 Seeq and Destroy 24 Checkmate Powell 25 Microcode 26 Gold 27 The Vancouver Complaint 28 A Scandal in Malaysia 29 Davidian’s Bonus 30 The New CEO 31 An Anonymous Caller 32 Lagging the Koreans 33 Raising the Tax 34 The Two Webbs 35 Departures 36 A Question of Drafting 37 The Traitorous Two 38 A Hacker Inside 39 Tech Support Screws Up 40 The 10x Force 41 Winning the Platform Wars KEEP READING NOTES INDEX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR OTHER BOOKS BY ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Fourth Estate

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1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 1997

Copyright © Tim Jackson 1997

Tim Jackson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780006387977

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008240615

Version: 2017-01-05

DEDICATION DEDICATION PROLOGUE: A Half-Billion-Dollar Mistake PART ONE · INNOVATION 1 The Odds-On Favourite 2 2,000 Starts a Week 3 The Third and Fourth Men 4 Into the Potato Patch 5 A Saviour from Bucks County 6 The Rebels 7 Yellow Snow 8 The Microprocessor 9 Public Company 10 Second Source 11 Turning Failure to Profit 12 A New Standard PART TWO · DOMINATION 13 Borovoy Wins a Patent Battle 14 A Competitor on the Horizon 15 Penang Burning 16 Gopen Beats the Union 17 The Stop-Gap 18 Marriages and Divorces 19 Organization and Alpha Particles 20 The Microma Mistake 21 Crush! 22 Whetstone’s Design Win PART THREE · EXCLUSION 23 Seeq and Destroy 24 Checkmate Powell 25 Microcode 26 Gold 27 The Vancouver Complaint 28 A Scandal in Malaysia 29 Davidian’s Bonus 30 The New CEO 31 An Anonymous Caller 32 Lagging the Koreans 33 Raising the Tax 34 The Two Webbs 35 Departures 36 A Question of Drafting 37 The Traitorous Two 38 A Hacker Inside 39 Tech Support Screws Up 40 The 10x Force 41 Winning the Platform Wars KEEP READING NOTES INDEX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR OTHER BOOKS BY ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

To Emily Marbach

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE: A Half-Billion-Dollar Mistake

PART ONE · INNOVATION

1 The Odds-On Favourite

2 2,000 Starts a Week

3 The Third and Fourth Men

4 Into the Potato Patch

5 A Saviour from Bucks County

6 The Rebels

7 Yellow Snow

8 The Microprocessor

9 Public Company

10 Second Source

11 Turning Failure to Profit

12 A New Standard

PART TWO · DOMINATION

13 Borovoy Wins a Patent Battle

14 A Competitor on the Horizon

15 Penang Burning

16 Gopen Beats the Union

17 The Stop-Gap

18 Marriages and Divorces

19 Organization and Alpha Particles

20 The Microma Mistake

21 Crush!

22 Whetstone’s Design Win

PART THREE · EXCLUSION

23 Seeq and Destroy

24 Checkmate Powell

25 Microcode

26 Gold

27 The Vancouver Complaint

28 A Scandal in Malaysia

29 Davidian’s Bonus

30 The New CEO

31 An Anonymous Caller

32 Lagging the Koreans

33 Raising the Tax

34 The Two Webbs

35 Departures

36 A Question of Drafting

37 The Traitorous Two

38 A Hacker Inside

39 Tech Support Screws Up

40 The 10x Force

41 Winning the Platform Wars

KEEP READING

NOTES

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER BOOKS BY

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

PROLOGUE

A Half-Billion-Dollar Mistake

ARTHUR ROCK WAS PROBABLY standing staring out of the floor-to-ceiling windows, gazing at the evening lights of the December city skyline, when the call came in.

His office suite, on the twelfth floor of a tall tower in San Francisco’s financial district, had a group of comfortable sofas at one end dominated by a collection of bold modern pictures. But Rock, who had suffered a bout of polio as a child, liked to take calls standing up. Next to his desk stood a light-coloured wooden reading lectern, which allowed him to work on his feet – like a clerk in a nineteenth-century government office.

It was hard, though, to imagine anyone further removed from the nineteenth century. Rock was a billionaire venture capitalist, who had made his money by investing in some of the most successful technology companies in history. He saw his job as doing more than simply picking winners and then sitting back to watch them get on with it. When Arthur Rock invested money in a company, he sat on its board of directors and helped to guide its strategy. In times of crisis, when his investments might be at risk, he’d be ready if needed to step in with firm advice on how the company should recover its correct course.

The incoming phone call gave no clue that today might be one of those occasions. As Rock’s secretary put the call through to his speakerphone, he heard the soft-spoken voice of Gordon Moore, chairman of Intel Corporation, opening the proceedings with his customary calm. Ever methodical, Moore would often start Intel’s board meetings by checking that all the participants had received the appropriate papers from Jean Jones, his trusted secretary for nearly thirty years.

Rock didn’t need to be told why the Intel directors were holding today’s board meeting by conference call instead of at the company’s headquarters in Santa Clara, just over an hour’s drive south of the city. Like the other Intel directors, he had read all about the crisis in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Intel’s heavily advertised flagship product, its new Pentium microprocessor, was flawed. The company had known about the flaw for some months and kept quiet about it, believing that only a tiny fraction of the millions of users of the chip across the world would ever be inconvenienced by the problem. But the flaw had been discovered by a mathematics professor, whose data had been posted on the Internet. Intel’s attempt to play down the issue had angered customers, worried investors, and ultimately provoked a storm of criticism in the media, culminating in a damaging report on CNN.