Intel, Achronix and Manufacturing Intel is a semiconductor
manufacturing company that happens to design x86 microprocessors
(quite good ones, incidentally). It is first and foremost an
Integrated Device Manufacturer (IDM) – a company which designs,
manufactures and sells its own chips; the nature of these chips
is somewhat secondary. This fact isn’t obvious to many people
outside the industry, because Intel is most famous for their
Pentium microprocessors and has spent tremendous money and
effort raising awareness through marketing campaigns. Intel is
much akin to iceberg; manufacturing is the invisible mass that
is the bulk of the company, with roughly half the head count and
the first 4 CEOs (Noyce, Moore, Grove and Barrett). Intel’s
high-volume logic manufacturing prowess is unmatched in the
industry. IBM has equally talented research and development, but
silicon is just one dimension of their overall system-centric
approach (e.g. packaging, interconnects) and they are a low
volume and high cost player. As