Intel boss declares war on television

By Patrick McKenna

LAS VEGAS (NB)-"We are not in the PC business, we are in the business of creating interactive lifelike adventures and experiences," claimed Intel cofounder and chief executive officer, Andrew Grove, as he delivered the opening keynote address at Comdex/Fall 96.

Not being in the PC business means "we are in a war for eyeballs, it's TV or the PC," he said.

Grove's keynote addressed the birth of the first micrprocessor and moved quickly to a live video visit to a prototype Starbucks cafe in Seattle.

Jumping into the future, Grove sketched Intel's microprocessor for the year 2011 or "the warship," which he says will take the PC far beyond the television experience.

Intel's 2011 microprocessor will conduct 100,000 instructions per second with the help of more than 100 billion transistors that operate at 10 gigahertz. To do this Intel has to create a layer inside a microprocessor .07 microns thick. Comparatively, a human hair is 100 to 150 microns thick. A layer in today's microprocessor is approximately .35 microns.

Grove's keynote theme was "a revolution in progress." He said the railroads failed because they thought they were in the railroad business instead of the transportation business.

He promised Intel would not be in the PC business. Intel, according to Grove, is in a revolution to overtake TV and create what "users really want, a fully interactive 3D lifelike experience."

Grove showed the first Pentium Pro 200 with MMX technology as a demonstration of the PC's capabilities going into 1997.

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TCP Online January 1997 Issue