It's a company that got bigger as its signature product got smaller and faster. The computer microprocessor containing billions of transistors.
"It created an industry that changed the world in more ways than you can count. Forty years ago when Intel got started, I don't even think they had any idea how big a deal this was all going to become," says CNET.com staff writer Tom Krazit.
Intel's random access memory chip ushered in the era of computing at work, at school, at home and on-the-go.
Co-founder Gordon Moore said chip speeds would double every 18 to 24 months. It became known as Moore's Law.
Intel dwarfs the competition with an 80 percent market share, and that has prompted antitrust concerns.
"They've met with some problems in Japan for one and South Korea. The European investigation is unfolding, and of course, there's a U.S. antitrust lawsuit pending in this country as well," says Krazit.
"That's really the first job at Intel, is to make sure we're complying with the law, and sometimes that requires us to defend ourselves in court, and sometimes it requires us to make explanations to our customers and to our communities about what we're doing, so in a sense it comes with the territory, but you should never be complacent about this, and we're never going to get to be complacent about this," says Bruce Sewell, Intel's chief counsel.
Intel marked its 40th anniversary with a party at the Boys & Girls Club in East Palo Alto in a computer lab it donated. Young teens participated in an art project to visualize what technology will allow them to do 40 years from now.
"I think we're going to have flying cars so we won't have to be on airplanes or anything like that," says 13-year-old artist Victor Marin.
Moore was asked early on what they could use microprocessors for. His thought -- to control traffic signals. Intel has gone a lot further than that.
More on the Intel World Mural Project:
For more information on the Intel World Mural Project, visit www.worldmuralproject.com
From around the world, kids give their views into a future after 40 more years of computing:
- From a young survivor of the recent earthquake in China, a future machine that releases pressures and forces in the earth to prevent quakes.
- From a student in Ireland, a prediction of wearable computer/communicators. They look like wrist watches connected to pinky rings and thumb rings, which you talk and listen through-the way people currently motion "call me."
- A fountain-of-youth drawing dominated by the medical symbol (caduceus) and an arrow pointing from an old face to a young face, with the caption "the best is yet to come."
- A student's muck and dirt-mound landscape with the caption" in 40 years, computers will empower us to keep earth from becoming a landfill."
- A student's predictions that in 40 years with computers, we will be able to teleport back in time, communicate through holograms, and transform our computers into cars.
- A more personal note from a Massachusetts student that computers will help make them become a doctor, save lives, and invent an artificial leg to help others.
- From a student in Jordan, a future landscape of flying cars and the words "finally a cure for cancer."
- From a student in India, a mandala of hope with the caption "In 40 years computers will change the world".
- From a student in Panama, a drawing of books and happy faces with the caption "In 40 years computers will enable us to eliminate illiteracy in the world. "
- On Einstein's portrait, the idea that we will vastly improve our brain power by storing and sharing our thoughts through memory pens we can plug into our brains.
