Category: Intel

Introduction:

Intel Corporation was founded in 1968 and is now the biggest semiconductor chip manufacturer over the world. It now has more than 600 facilities within 107.4 thousand employees worldwide (Intel, 2016). The main businesses Intel providing are key components for computer production all over the world, including processors, chipsets, boards, systems and software, and so on. Nowadays, with the development of the internet and computer industry, the competition of hardware manufacturers becomes extremely fierce while Intel can still be the world’s leader of semiconductor chip manufacturer and designer. According to the 2017 top 25 supply chain announced by Gartner, Intel ranks top 6 among the list. Two main characteristics of the Supply Chain Top 25 ranking are the demonstration of demand-driven leadership and corporate social responsibility (Intel IT, 2017). There is no doubt that its successful supply chain mode helps Intel stays at the top of the hardware manufacturing area.

Structures of Supply Chain:

The process of Intel corporation’s semiconductor supply network can be divided into several different layers which are monitored by the same organization. There are more than 17,000 suppliers in more than 100 countries contribute to the supply chain. They provide equipment, accessories, raw materials, logistics transportation and various non-production materials and travel services for Intel (Intel, 2018). The first layer of the supply chain is mining and producing the bare silicon wafers and this part comprises of hundreds of separate steps. This layer will take 10 weeks averagely because the wafers need to be divided into different integrated circuits. The circuits will be sent to an E-test once they are manufactured and they will be sorted according to whether the functions of integrated circuits are intended (Jeffery, 2005). It will take another average of 10 weeks from E-test to delivery and totally 20 weeks for the whole supply chain, but Intel’s forecasting and management make more than 50% orders be met within 4 weeks by using efficient strategies and management approaches.

Strategies of Supply Chain:

The main object of Intel’s management strategy is to actively manage their supply chain to make business value for both Intel Corporation and its customers. Their successful management approach helps them reduce risks and improve the quality of the product. Intel also focuses on achieving environmental and social goals and raising the overall performance of suppliers. In 2017, 86% of suppliers participating in their CSR leadership program and met all of the requirements, a significant increase from 57% in 2013 when the program started. Again, 100% of first-tier suppliers have responded to the CDP supply chain survey in 2017 (Intel, 2018).

High Standards for Internal and External Environment

Intel creates accountability to satisfy or exceed the same standards that they set for suppliers and audit themselves to the same standards. Intel provides the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition Code of Conduct (EICC Code) for both suppliers and themselves that requiring to satisfy the standards about environmental, social and ethical issues under the electronics industry (Intel, 2016). In addition, Intel uses the EICC Validated Assessment Process (VAP) tool to audit their own performance. In 2017, their assembly and test facility in Kulim, Malaysia was audited, and got overall score was 197 out of 200 finally. Again, Chengdu, China facility was audited in 2016 received a perfect score following a closure audit in 2017 (Intel, 2018).

In order to ensure that suppliers are accountable, Intel uses various of tools and processes to manage suppliers’ performance such as the Program to Accelerate Supplier Sustainability (PASS), Supplier Report Card (SRC), Assessments, and Audits, and Targeted Action Plans. PASS helps suppliers to create internal ability around corporate responsibility by strict commitments about obedience, transparency, and ability-building. The amount of participating suppliers has reached more than 300 in 2017 from 100 in 2013, and 86% of participants satisfied all PASS requirements at the end of 2017 (Intel, 2018). Assessments and Audits offer more than 300 environmental, safety, and human rights issues that Intel can better analyze the risk profile of suppliers. From 2013 to 2017, their suppliers experienced over 450 Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) VAP and Intel RBA-based target audits. And Intel aims to audit 100% of high-risk supplier sites in two years (Intel, 2018).

Skills and Capabilities Founding

Intel offers training, infrastructure and tools for suppliers to meet comprehensive, sustainable improvements. For example, Online Resource, it is accessible for all suppliers to enter Intel’s complimentary interactive Supplier Sustainability Resource Center. This centre covers more than 20 critical topics’ information such as management systems, working hours, social insurance in China, lean manufacturing and so on (Intel, 2016). The feature of user feedback is direct, two-way dialogue via the platform which brings new perceptions about critical sustainability topics. Again, Intel launched a face-to-face workshops program in 2014, they worked with the supply chain sustainability consultant, ELEVATE, to support suppliers to address work-hours management. Besides that, Intel has direct engagement with suppliers in order to increase suppliers’ performance and achieve higher efficiency. In 2016, Intel and Dell co-hosted an executive round table in Taiwan to cooperate in innovative approaches that speed up supplier progress on sustainability performance (Intel, 2016). In 2017, Intel provided custom training plans for select suppliers to reinforce their management’s insights and eliminate any compliance gaps (Intel, 2018).

Industry Collaboration

Collaboration is key to solving broad, long-standing matters. Intel as one of the founders of the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) actively collaborate with supply chain-related organisations including RBA, Semiconductor Industry Association and SEMI, they assist to establish electronics industry standards, improve auditing processes, conduct training, ensure membership compliance and so on. Also, Intel co-founded the multi-industry, multi-stakeholder Responsible Labor Initiative (RLI), which is responsible for protecting and promoting the rights of vulnerable workers (Intel, 2018). They declare that they will try their best to minimise or eliminate the likelihood of vulnerable workers being in forced and bonded labour circumstances.

Supplier Diversity

Intel believes that cooperating with a variety of supply chain can take more innovation, more opportunities and greater value to their business. Intel diversity not only towards employing and retention, but also contains diversifying venture portfolio, strengthening the technical channel and spending with diverse suppliers. While Intel has been committed to supplier diversity for many years, in 2015 Intel greatly strengthened that commitment with a new objective to expand spending with various suppliers to $1 billion by 2020 (Intel, 2016).

Issues of Supply Chain & Solutions:

Although everything seems going on well with Intel’s reasonable management, there are still some issues needing to be dealt with. For instance, the total time for Intel supply chain is averagely 20 weeks (which is actually quite long) and moreover, more than 50% of their orders are met in 4 weeks while the semiconductor components only have a life cycle of 1.5 years. So, the demand for semiconductor components is very unstable. The drops of demand for components may make a large amount of inventory which is at the end of product life left in companies’ warehouse. On the contrary, the rises of demand may result in stocking out and bring lost revenue. The main problem here (Actually for the whole microprocessor) is that the life cycle is just 1.5 years. Although reducing inventory may be a strategy, the problem is that the stockout cost is too high compared to the inventory cost (Jeffery, 2005).

So how to deal with the problem of the unstable demand of the semiconductor components for Intel? Mariah Jeffery determined to develop “a method for determining and controlling inventory levels” (Jeffery, 2005) and she found that no policy can achieve a win-win stage between minimizing cost and minimizing variability. Jeffery showed that updating the inventory projection models more frequently (than monthly rate) does not benefit the moderately variable products and so that tighter control should be executed for highly variable products. This author concluded for Intel corporation that they need to make a choice between the desire to minimise variability compared to the cost and the amount that could be invested in forecasting.

In addition, Intel as a world leader in the design and manufacturing of essential products and technologies that fulfils over 1 million orders a year from several factories and 30 warehouses. Intel needs to deal with more than a terabyte of supply chain and manufacturing data every day. With the development of business, supply chain efficiency and agility become very important for the corporate’s continuous success. Decreasing supply chain cost is always a crucial point for large companies. But it is equally significant to ongoing innovate, while synchronously keeping supply chain stability. Until just a few years ago, Intel’s legacy supply chain structure did not support business agility and innovation (Intel IT, 2017). The growing business environment with cumulative cost pressure and new E-commercial models made a traditional method to supply chain management cumbersome. Ageing data warehouse and batch-driven processes have resulted in multiple data hops, data latencies of up to 12 hours, data fragmentation, data reconciliation and quality issues (Intel IT, 2017).

In order to solve these issues, Intel determined to re-architect the supply chain that enhances decision-making capabilities. Also, Intel determined to install an in-memory database and advanced analytics with SAP HANA technology. SAP HANA provides real-time data management which means data can be analysed within seconds of it being saved or created, no need to wait hours for a report or to perform analysis (Intel It, 2017). Intel creates an integrated data platform (IDP) to integrate the SAP HANA system with its Cloudera Distribution of Hadoop cluster. Thus, the combination of SAP HANA’s in-memory capabilities and Hadoop’s big data capabilities provides a real-time “sense-and-respond” supply chain. This kind of supply chain data transformation strategy satisfies the principles of end-to-end visibility, responsiveness and simplification. These capabilities play a crucial role in creating business value by maximised margins, faster product achievement, decreased operating costs, decreased inventory days, and increased superior operation (Intel IT, 2017).

Conclusion:

In summary, Intel as a leader in the microprocessor industry should continue to set high requirements for both internal and external standards. They need to make efforts on suppliers’ skills and capabilities building and actively work in industry collaboration. Under the supply chain responsibility, Intel is expected to protect and promote the rights of vulnerable workers in the electronics industry, they need to use their influence to reduce forced and bonded labour in the world. Again, Intel should provide ongoing investment in diversity development and aim for 2020 goal of $1 billion annual spendings with diverse suppliers.

References:

1. Intel (2016). 2016 Corporate Responsibility Report. [online] Intel Corp. Available at: http://csrreportbuilder.intel.com/PDFfiles/CSR-2016_Full-Report.pdf [Accessed 21 Apr. 2019].
2. Intel (2018). 2017-2018 Corporate Responsibility at Intel Report. [online] Intel Corp. Available at: http://csrreportbuilder.intel.com/pdfbuilder/pdfs/CSR-2017_Full-Report.pdf [Accessed 21 Apr. 2019].
3. Intel IT (2017). Transforming Intel’s Supply Chain with Real-Time Analytics. [online] IT@Intel. Available at: https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/transforming-supply-chain-with-real-time-analytics-whitepaper.pdf [Accessed 22 Apr. 2019].
4. Jeffery, M. (2005). Achieving Cost-effective Supply Chain Agility For The Semiconductor Industry. University of Central Florida, 574.

The chipset manufacturing industry has been under constant transformation due to the rivalry between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). These two chipmakers are the dominant players in the manufacture of CPUs. The fierce competition between Intel and AMD has caused considerable changes in chipset technologies as each firm tries to gain market control.

These two companies undertake frequent refinements of their chipsets to achieve optimal performance in terms of speed, graphics and power consumption to achieve greater customer appeal. A chipset’s performance depends on factors such as cache memory, clock speed, host-bus speed.

Of the two companies, AMD was the first to introduce a 64-bit chipset with a clocking capability measurable in gigahertz. In response, Intel introduced its EMT64 chipset possessing 64-bit functionalities. Intel and AMD employ different chipset production techniques. AMD focuses on the issue of compatibility and manufactures chips based on pre-existing sockets.

The company produces a range of chips based on a particular socket until there is need to upgrade to a new socket due to technological constrictions. In this regard, consumers face few difficulties when there is need to upgrade or replace a chipset.

In addition, AMD processors support backward-compatibility and thus provide users with a lot of flexibility. AMD’s focus on compatibility extends to its processors’ bridge components, which are easy to mix and match unlike Intel chips whose design considers certain processor families.

To counter AMD’s strategy, Intel ensures frequent release of chipsets and system boards. This cushions consumers against difficulties associated with replacement or upgrading as socket sizes vary with new chipset releases.

AMD places emphasis on the issue of energy consumption by designing processors that operate at low energy levels. This has helped to boost the company’s customer appeal as it considers the minimization of consumers’ energy expenses. An Intel processor with similar functionalities will operate at higher energy consumption levels.

A processor clocking speed and its extendibility are key considerations in high-end operations. The architecture of AMD chips support faster clocking and over-clocking while maintaining stability. AMD chips’ design ensures the location of the L3 cache memory outside the CPU core to support over-clocking.

One can vary the BIOS settings and increase the speed of a processor accordingly. An Intel chip constitutes of a L2 cache memory located in its core. Although Intel chips resist over-clocking, the location of the L2 cache memory facilitates faster memory access and thus enable higher performance when compared to the AMD L3 cache memory.

The correlation between performance and cache memory speed becomes significant during small data applications. Intel chipsets exhibit effectiveness in extracting and analyzing data during a single program operation.

The architecture of Intel CPUs ensures minimal heat generation during execution of tasks. In this regard, Intel chipsets are likely to last longer than AMD chipsets with equivalent functions as they normally exhibit higher heat generation. This is a major setback for AMD equipped machines when dealing with heavy applications.

Although both companies have exhibited high levels of innovativeness regarding chipset technology, Intel controls a considerably large portion of the chipset market. Intel’s dominance over AMD in terms of customer appeal emanates from extensive campaigns and licensing of the brand’s name to several PC manufacturers.

However, AMD continues to penetrate market segments previously dominated by Intel and has proven to be the greatest threat to Intel in the whole chipset industry.

Multiple central processing units (CPUs) are entering the market each year; however, it takes time to develop a decent one. Currently, Intel is one of the most influential providers of CPUs. Recently, the company has presented their 10nm chips to the market after several years of delay. By 2021, Intel was planning to introduce a new generation 7nm chip; however, facing some problems was inevitable, and they postponed the issue date. The representatives mentioned that “the company’s 7nm-based CPU product timing is shifting approximately six months relative to prior expectations” (Gartenberg, 2020, para. 2). The public anticipated the new chip to be the main innovation of the year, yet the defects identified were revealed in time.

The delay in production signifies that the company lags one year behind the modern innovation trends. Unlike Intel, “AMD has already been outputting its own Ryzen 4000 chips based on its 7nm architecture for months, which have been handily outperforming Intel’s offerings” (Gartenberg, 2020, para. 3). Nevertheless, the postponement did not interrupt the issue of the laptop 10nm CPUs named 11th Gen Tiger Lake chips (Gartenberg, 2020). In addition, the company set a goal to launch the 12th Gen Alder Lake processor for the computers at the end of 2020 (Gartenberg, 2020). These products are supposed to become highly advanced among the CPUs.

What is more, a year retention can also signify that Intel will launch the manufacturing of new 10-nm chip which are likely to be issued within the next coming years. Even Intel can make so many indents with its lineup. The latency of 10Nm chips helps lift a considerable portion of the laptop field, which is dependent on Intel’s roadmap and improves energy efficiency and productivity to develop better products (Gartenberg, 2020). The company’s current guidance can lead to such a consequence that the PC world may face similar congestion with Intel’s 7nm chips in the following years.

To my mind, Intel is one of the technologically advanced organizations which has influence over the CPU industry. Despite the production delays, the company may justify itself. They always created high-quality chips which means that they have done much work on them before issuing. Moreover, I do not consider the new 7nm-chip delay as a significant problem because Intel claims that some defect has been identified. Therefore, to keep on issuing technologically advanced chips, they have to put much effort into eradicating all the mistakes that can affect further use.

Furthermore, I believe that the changes Intel implements for the new CPU are vital for the devices so they must be checked multiple times before emerging on the market. While they work on this CPU, there is much time and resources to resume developing other programs, chips, and items. I think the issues they encountered are mainly due to the emergence of new technologies on the market and the current economic situation.

To conclude, I think the most crucial aspect Intel should pay attention to is the quality of their chips regardless of the delays. In the meantime, the company may introduce new PC components to the market offering new possibilities. Still, they have time to solve all issues connected with the new generation chips to avoid further defects. Moreover, Intel remains one of the best chip manufacturers in the world, so they have to stick to the guidelines in order to produce technologically advanced goods.

Reference

Gartenberg, C. (2020). Intel’s next-gen 7nm chips are delayed until at least 2022. The Verge. Web.

Analyzing the case of WiMAX and LTE, a general conclusion can be reached that the ecosystem of WiMAX is larger than LTE and has much more partisans at the present time of deployment. The ecosystem of WiMAX as an interaction of organizations can be seen through operators, end user devices suppliers, end users, infrastructure suppliers, and others. The key players, in that regard, can be seen through the operators and end-user device manufacturers.

For the former, it can be explained that end-user device manufacturers determine the attachment rate of a technology, and contribute to its rapid spread, as it can be seen through the example of Wi-Fi networks. It can be stated that for WiMAX, Intel gathered all the important participants for the creation of a WiMAX ecosystem. LTE, on the other hand, it can be stated that the ecosystem is yet to be created. The only participants of the systems are mobile operators, with neither devices nor infrastructure existent in the ecosystem. Thus, LTE the main and the only player are some 30 mobile operators, the largest of which are AT&T and Verizon.

Considering the scale of implementation and the participants of the ecosystem, it can be assumed that both technologies will coexist in some way or another. With LTE being developed over cellular networks, while WiMAX targeted computer devices first of all, it can be stated that the development might take simultaneous, different, and largely successful directions. One thing that can be stated for sure is that with WiMAX the situation might not be similar as with Wi-Fi, where the infrastructure was built by the end user. In the case of the WiMAX and LTE, the existent infrastructure and coverage plays the largest role, and thus, it might be assumed that they will be developed simultaneously.

The speed of development, however, might different in favor of WIMAX, considering the fact that the WIMAX chose the path of standardization, and accordingly, the involvement of a largest number of participants. Additionally, when an IP is open, rather than proprietary, it will be developed in a faster pace, even with the support of a few organizations. Such statement can be supported through the case of Adobe Flash format, and HTML5.

The development of Flash, Adobe’s proprietary format, took several years until it is supported by many websites and browsers. HTML is an open standard, and once it was officially promoted by a single large company, Apple for their IPads, IPods, and IPhones, it can be seen how within a year many companies started integrating the format into their WebPages and browsers, making their content available for both platforms (Miller, 2010). Although Apple is not a good example of openness, in this case it supports the statement that both technologies will succeed, but the speed of a widespread of a technology might be different.

The impact of 4G is mainly can be seen through providing accessible and mobile bandwidth everywhere. Thus, the impact on users can be seen through more cheap options to choose from in the segment of devices that support 4g. Hybrid devices which provide mobility with the capabilities of laptops might emerge. At the current state it can be assumed that internet tablets are the most obvious candidates for such role, which variation will expect to increase, while the prices decrease. An intermediate category might occur between tablets and smartphones, i.e. smartphones with larger displays, which will enable users to surf the web anywhere.

Business users might experience cost reduction in the cost of their communication, saving them the expenditures of building a network infrastructure, now with all computations taking place in the cloud, it can be assumed that with 4G less money will be spend on internal cabling, and more on security. The latter accordingly, will lead to an increase competition between major service providers, in which the winner will be determined through the largest support of end devices, higher service quality, and lower prices.

References

Miller, P. (2010). Steve Jobs publishes some ‘thoughts on Flash’… many, many thoughts on Flash. EndGadget. Web.

Schifrin, D., LaBrecque, M., & Burgelmann, R. (2010). Intel and WiMAX Case. Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Introduction

Intel is a large corporation, which limits the speed at which it can pivot its business and development practices. Any major change in these areas requires corresponding amounts of planning and designing the infrastructure to be beneficial. A poorly-planned change can cause significant negative consequences, which will require additional time and resources to mitigate. Thus, pivoting towards a method before it has been thoroughly tested, and its requisite infrastructure has been planned incurs major risks for an organization. For a corporation as large as Intel, such risks may not be acceptable. Therefore, it is reasonable to observe Agile’s adoption and use by Intel’s competitors to identify the best practices to aid in the corporation’s implementation.

Discussion

DevOps generally relies on infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS) cloud computing models to be effective. PaaS, which Intel uses, provides a programming language ecosystem as a cloud service. This allows for a faster development cycle, a critical goal for Agile and DevOps methods (Zettler, n. d.). Therefore, PaaS is a strong choice for these methods, although IaaS is a reasonable alternative.

For Intel, using PaaS allows distributed development teams to work on projects regardless of their physical location. As a large corporation with sites in 56 countries, this benefit is crucial as it allows specialists to work together on developing and testing code (Condon, 2019). Furthermore, the same access to data from multiple locations facilitates its analysis, including analysis by AI and machine learning algorithms (Condon, 2019). In the future, using PaaS will allow Intel to scale its development resources as necessary with relatively little effort and allow new sites to be created in virtually any location. The only limitation to this is the location’s reliable Internet access.

Conclusion

DevOps is a method aimed at shortening an organization’s development cycle. Thus, the primary criteria to measure its success are related to this goal. For instance, the frequency of update deployments is a reliable metric. The time it takes to test, discover, and correct any code errors can also be used as a metric of DevOps’ success. On the business side, the efficiency and profitability of projects before and after the method’s implementation can be used as indicators of the movement’s ultimate benefit to the organization.

References

Condon, S. (2019). Scaling Agile, adopting AI: How Intel is making IT a strategic part of the business. ZDnet. Web.

Zettler, K. (n. d.) Platform as a Service. Atlassian. Web.

Intel Core i5 is a family of 64-bit x86 processors’ mid-range performance developed by Intel for laptops and desktops. The Core i5 was introduced in 2009 by Intel to succeed the core 2 families. Therefore, this family is found between low-end and high-end performance core i3 and i7, respectively. Core i5 processors contain four cores with features like turbo boost technology. According to Intel, core i5 processors are grouped into generations depending on the microarchitecture, like 1^st generation Nehalem and sandy bridge. The generation of Intel microarchitecture has been spearheaded by the increasing need for performance from personalized computers (Varis & Manner, 2011). Sandy Bridge has an advanced memory controller and increased processing power, making it more advanced than its predecessors.

Processor’s Instruction Set Architecture Lengths and Format

Processors implement instruction set architecture (ISA) that specifies a set of instructions that are linked with machine language. In the current computer generation, the most common ISAs are IA-32 and Intel 64 (Lempel, 2011). The IA-32 and Intel 64 architectures instructions constitute instruction prefixes, a maximum of 3-bytes principal opcode bytes, addressing form specifier containing ModR/M and scale index base byte, an immediate data field, and displacement. There are four instruction prefixes: lock and repeat forming group 1, segment override, branch hints, and bound prefix in group 2. The third group comprises operand-size override prefixes encoded using 66H, while 67H, an address-size override prefix, forms the fourth group (‘‘Intel® 64 and IA-32 architectures software developer manuals,’’ 2022). Primarily, opcodes can have 1 to 3 bytes, and in the ModR/M byte, there can be an encoding of an additional 3-bit opcode field. In the primary opcode, smaller fields are defined to show the direction of sign extension, condition codes, register encoding, displacement size, and operations. Operation class determines the encoding fields and varies based on the opcode.

The ModR/M byte comprises of mod field that aggregates the r/m field to create 24 addressing modes and 8 registers and reg/opcode that specify the number of registers and opcode information. In addition, the r/m field specifies registers as an operand and combines mod fields to allow encoding of addressing mode. Second, addressing bytes are used in the scale plus index forms and base plus index that includes fields such as scale field that act as scaling factor. Index field signifies several registers for index registers, and base specifies base register numbers (‘‘Intel® 64 and IA-32 architectures software developer manuals,’’ 2022). Displacement in addressing forms that follow the SIB byte or ModR/M byte must be either one, two, or four bytes. Instructions that specify immediate operands are followed by displacement bytes. Currently, the AVX instructions length does not exceed 11 bytes in length. However, in Intel 64 and IA-32, the maximum length of instructions remains 15 bytes.

Processor’s CPU Execution Components

CPU refers to the processor package on a typical motherboard, and the conceptual diagram is shown in the figure below, with RAM and system clock not forming part of the CPU. The execution components of processor CPU include ALU, cache, RAM, hyperthreading, supercharging the instruction cycle, CPU clock and control unit, memory management unit, an instruction register, and pointer. The arithmetic logic unit (ALU) performs the logical and arithmetic functions of the computer. Computer registers A and B hold input data while the accumulator receives the operation result. All the instruction executed by the ALU is found in the instruction register (‘‘Arithmetics on Intel’s Sandy Bridge and Westmere CPUs: Not all FLOPs are created equal,’’ 2020). ALU also performs an address in memory operation that involves calculating a new location in memory to start the loading of instructions, after which it places into the instruction pointer register.

An ALU contains numerous input and output nets that convey digital signals between it and external circuitry. An ALU comprises three parallel data buses: two input operands and an output giving one binary integer number. Opcodes specify the desired logic or arithmetic operations an ALU performs, and the opcode size determines the maximum number of ALU operations. Status signals of a general-purpose ALU include carry-out, zero, negative, overflow, and parity. These statuses are stored in external registers to allow ALU to access future operations when implementing multiple-precision arithmetic and controlling conditional branching (‘‘Arithmetics on Intel’s Sandy Bridge and Westmere CPUs: Not all FLOPs are created equal,’’ 2020). The arithmetic operations of an ALU include addition, subtraction, add with carry, subtract with borrow, pass through, decrement, increment, and negate or two’s complement. However, bitwise logical operations entail AND, OR, Exclusive-OR, and One’s complement. The operations carried out by ALU can result in bit shifting from left or right based on the opcode. Thus, the bit shift-type can be through carry, rotate, logical shift, or arithmetic shift.

Processor’s Pipeline Stages

Pipelining entails the accumulation of processor’s instructions through a pipeline to allow instructions’ storage and execution in an organized process. During execution of instructions multiple instructions can overlap during pipelining. It is categorized into stages, which are interconnected to create a pipe-like structure. During pipelining, total efficiency is achieved by passing instructions from one end and exiting it in another (‘‘Squeezing more instructions per cycle out of the Intel Sandy Bridge CPU pipeline,’’ 2020). There are two processor pipelines, an arithmetic and instruction and a five-stage instruction pipeline for executing RISC instructions set. The pipeline stages are instruction fetch, instruction decode and instruction execute, memory access, and write back.

Instruction fetch forms the first stage in which the central processing unit reads instructions from the memory address containing values in current program counters. The instruction fetch stage does PC+4 calculation, pre-decode for register file read, and it is where the next instruction fetch is performed. The second stage is instruction decode, where instructions are decoded, and file register retrieved to acquire the register values used in the instructions. At this stage, also hazard resolution and data forwarding are carried out. ALU operations, branch resolution, memory address calculation, and CSR read/write are done in stage three, or the instruction executes stage. In the memory access stage, the memory operands are written and read to or from memory existing in the instruction and branch redirection. At the write-back stage, the computed or fetched value is written back to the register available in the instruction. Therefore, the write-back stage enhances data dependency resolution by offering general-purpose register values.

The pipeline can stall because of data dependency and resource stall. Data dependency occurs when the source operand is unavailable in the decoding stage and instruction in the decode stage and fetch stage stalls until it becomes available. The pipeline stalling can occur if the general-purpose destination register multicycle or load instructions in the execution or memory stage become the source for the instruction decode stage. In addition, a resource stall occurs if the multicycle or memory operation pends in the instruction memory stage. The instructions in prior stages stall until the memory stage concludes the instruction set.

Reference

Arithmetics on Intel’s Sandy Bridge and Westmere CPUs: Not all FLOPs are created equal. (2020). Colfax Research. Web.

Intel® 64 and IA-32 architectures software developer manuals. (2022). Intel. Web.

Lempel, O. (2011). 2nd generation Intel® core processor family: Intel® core i7, i5, and i3. In 2011 IEEE Hot Chips 23 Symposium (HCS) (pp. 1-48). IEEE.

Squeezing more instructions per cycle out of the Intel Sandy Bridge CPU pipeline. (2020). Colfax Research. Web.

Varis, N., & Manner, J. (2011). In the network: Sandy bridge versus Nehalem. ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review, 39(2), 53-55.

One of the striking advertisements in Intel’s Sponsors of the Future campaign is the Clean Room advertisement. (Shea, 2011) The printed advertisement consists of two pictures. The picture on the left depicts a little girl taking pride in her clean bedroom, while the picture on the right shows Intel workers in a futuristic-looking industrial cleanroom. The contrast between the everyday sense of cleanliness and the extreme measures to avoid airborne particles emphasizes the quest for perfection.

The advertisement is designed to indicate that Intel is striving to explore the future, and their achievements are beyond what we are used to in everyday life. It is aimed at inspiring confidence in the quality of the product, and the future of their developments.

The advertisement provides a stark contrast between the two pictures. The little girl’s room is a warm pink, comfortable and familiar, while the cleanroom is clinically blue, white and silver. The racks and shelves in the pink room display a variety of shapes, while the objects in the blue room are dominated by rectangular structures. The little girl is sitting on her bed in comfort, while the technicians in the cleanroom are all standing. The main character is standing straight, almost at attention. The entire composition creates a welcoming and informal atmosphere in the girl’s room, while the cleanroom atmosphere is formal and businesslike, almost daunting. Even the font of the text superimposed on the pictures differs significantly. The “my clean room” script in the girl’s room is in playful, rounded font with a starburst on each word, while the blue room “our clean room” script is in an angular, formal font. The repetition of the words “clean room” in the text serves to emphasize the contrast between different perceptions of clean.

In both photos, the main focal point is a prominent human. Both the little girl and the woman in the bunny suit are on the left side of the composition, suggesting that they may be the same person, at different ages. Although the little girl is facing directly into the camera, her body is facing slightly towards the right.

The polka dot carpet and curtains in the girl’s room correspond with the blue dot pattern on the synthetic white cleanroom floor. The toys and ornaments in the girl’s room show a single-minded interest in horses. The main character in the cleanroom, the woman in a clean suit, would have to have a single-minded dedication to her job in this environment. The pride the little girl takes in keeping her room clean could well develop into a passion for cleanliness, which would be an advantage in the career of a cleanroom technician.

The more dominant of the two photos is the cleanroom. This is enhanced by the camera angle, which is slightly downwards in the girl’s room and slightly upwards in the cleanroom. The composition of the photos also portrays the little girl as less important. She appears in the bottom half of the picture of her room, while the face of the woman in the cleanroom is in the top half of the photo, a much more superior position. The placement of the photos also draws attention towards the cleanroom. Because we read from left to right, we look at the right-hand picture last, and longer. Although the little girl is appealing, the scene is not extraordinary. On the other hand, few people have been inside a clean room, and the futuristic-looking setting and suits are more compelling due to their unfamiliarity.

There is a definite sense of achievement in the advertisement. An environment that appears extraordinary and futuristic is equated to achievement. The cleanroom could well be part of the little girl’s dream for the future.

The narrative in the right bottom corner explains the purpose of the cleanroom while trying to accommodate children of about the same age as the little girl in the pink room, or younger. This is the weakest part of the advertisement. After the imagery of “the tiniest speck of dust is the equivalent to a two-ton boulder around our microscopic transistors” and the fairly technical comparison of “10,000 times cleaner than a hospital operating room”, calling a cleanroom bunny suits “silly-looking outfits” is inconsistent.

Due to the incongruous narrative, it is difficult to determine the intended target audience. If the advertisement is aimed at young children, it would not be very successful. Children can’t visualize the size of a two-ton object, and probably don’t know what a transistor is. Most have no idea of the sterility required in an operating theatre and the comparison would mean nothing to them. On the other hand, if the advertisement is aimed at adults, they would take a cleanroom seriously and the childish description of the cleanroom suits would irritate them.

Society likes cleanliness, model kids and big dreams. Using these elements, the advertisement is compelling in its simplicity.

Works Cited

Shea, Danny “The Best Magazine Advertising Of The Year (PHOTOS)” Huffington Post, 2011 Web.

Investing in a specific region can be especially difficult for any developing organization. It is essential to consider various social and economic factors when preparing for monetary input. Intel’s decision to provide financial support to CINDE in Costa Rica was proven to be a successful choice. In this work, the benefits of such resolution will be explained, and arguments supporting this statement will be presented.

The Intel international company is widely known for its lucrative business strategies. During the communication with the CINDE organization, based in Costa Rica, Intel had to consider several issues connected to various spheres of development in this region. Some of the problems were related to education and labor, as the country did not possess an efficient mid-level schooling system, thus creating a lack of available professional workers (Nelson, 2021). Additionally, the company’s concerns targeted the transportation and electrical systems, as Costa Rica had few daily flights and was not prepared for an increased rate of production.

Despite the difficulties presented, the investment into the country was still a profitable choice. First of all, Costa Rica is a highly stable, democratic state, lacking political and militaristic issues. Most of the government’s focus was directed towards the citizens’ welfare, as well the preservation of surrounding nature. Even though the country’s economy was relatively small, CINDE’s autonomy and efficiency were exceptional. Finally, Costa Rican officials were highly enthusiastic about a coalition with Intel and offered the company extra assistance. However, the government did not break any of its laws, which is an excellent marker of the state’s reliability. All of these features pointed to a possibility of a stable and thriving relationship between Costa Rica and Intel.

Reference

Nelson, R. C. (2000). Intel’s site selection decision in Latin America.Thunderbird International Business Review, 42(2). 227-249. Web.

Introduction

It is undeniable that the global business community is in the era of growth by mergers and acquisition. Many companies, corporations and organizations have recorded massive growth through either merging with or acquiring other companies. This is due to the benefits likely to be achieved in the process. Intel is one of such companies. Since its emergence, Intel has made acquisition of at least two companies. This paper discusses the concept of acquisition with reference to the recent acquisition of Telmap by Intel.

Concept acquisition

There are many ways in which a business organization can increase its market share and spur growth. This can either be done by creating new products and introducing them to the market or acquiring the already existing companies. Acquisition refers to the concept of buying of an already existing business, business idea, or a brand. For instance, Intel acquired McAfee and later acquired Wind River and made the brands their own. This brings about diversification since a company can diversify its products and services to meet market demands.

Intel Acquisition of Telmap

Intel is arguably the largest chip maker in the globe providing the world with a very wide variety of microchips for computers and other electronic components. Due to the rising need for security features in electronic components Intel acquired McAfee, an application Security Company and incorporated its technology in manufacture of chips, applications and other components.

As the demand for handheld devices sored up Intel acquired Wind River which deals with operating systems and softwares for cell phone applications. Now Intel is acquiring Telmap which deals with navigation systems. Intel sees this as a milestone step towards tapping to the rising market demand for handheld navigation systems (Reuters, 2011).

Creating value by Acquisition

Intel will certainly create value in different ways through acquisition of Telmap. First the company will be able to expand its core business to cover the rising usage of handheld navigation devices. This can be seen as diversification. Secondly the combination of two globally reputable companies will solidify the consumer confidence in the products created after the acquisition hence increasing brand loyalty.

Thirdly, Intel will benefit from the economy of scale since costs of production will reduce thus the company will be able to sell the products at a lower cost. Finally, Telmap has gained a high ranking in business performance and as such it can be assumed that its business confidence will be transferred to Intel hence boosting its operations.

Intel as an Example

There are pros and cons in acquisitions but Intel serves as one of the best examples of businesses which have greatly benefited from acquisitions. By investigating the current needs and trends in the global market, this company has been able to successfully make acquisition of two companies.

Hopefully, Intel will still reap the benefits of acquiring Telmap. Other companies have already learned a lesson from Intel careful and strategic acquisition in that they enable companies to remain relevant in times of changing market demands. However, this has not come without questions being raised. Some have argued that Intel is seeking monopoly in the chip industry though the management has totally refuted these claims (Reuters, 2011).

Conclusion

Business acquisition is one way of expanding market share, increasing productivity as well as maintaining business relevance during changing market conditions. Intel has served as an excellent example of a business which has benefited from acquisitions. Intel will greatly create value especially considering that Telmap is a well performing company. Acquisition is a good business concept but only when done with a careful approach.

Reference

Reuters. (2011). Corrected – Update 1-Intel acquires Israeli mobile navigation firm Telmap. Web.

Changes

Change within an organizational setup is natural and healthy. However, as revealed in Intel’s case, change can bring disastrous results if mishandled. Due to the nature of risks involved, many organizational changes fail in their attempt to accomplish their intended objectives. Craig R. Barett undertook rapid organizational changes for the first three years after ascending to the helm of Intel’s leadership. First, he ventured into new markets previously not known to Intel, that is, he started a production line for information and communication applications as well as internet-related services. Intel was traditionally known for producing computer microchips.

In an attempt to reorganize the organization, Barett also came up with other units that proved costly for the organization. For instance, he acquired DSP communications Inc. and combined it with Intel’s flash memory unit to develop a new wireless department.

Not only did he create the Architecture group aimed at combining the development and manufacturing processes of core processors, but also reorganized the same group in his third year at the helm to create a new unit after merging the communications and networking operations of the organization. Craig also undertook to change the organizational culture of Intel, choosing to rely on outside sources to assist him model a strategy that would see Intel’s employees focus more on customer relations.

Environmental Pressures for Change

Intel experienced a multiplicity of environmental pressures for change during Barett’s tenure at the helm. First, it was the September 11 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre, followed closely by the slowing down of economy. As such, Intel was forced by both mandated and geopolitical pressures to change its way of operations. In the former, change is demanded by external forces, while in the latter, the organization is forced to restructure due to emerging global crises.

During this time, there was a probable threat of war with Iraq, a scenario that further contributed to the soaring of markets for Intel’s chips, implying that geopolitical pressures pushed Intel’s further to reorganize its operations. Lastly, Intel was forced to withdraw from new markets for network servers and routers by fellow competitors, Dell and Cisco, implying that the organization had to reckon with hypercompetitive pressures.

Other Pressures for Change

Intel was also faced with a multiplicity of internal organizational pressures for change. First, the organization was experiencing product delays and shortages for its chips. There was also the issue of overpricing and recalls of products, factors that only helped to dent the good name and reputation of Intel.

The organization had to not only reckon with computer bugs affecting their systems, thereby causing huge losses, but also fight internal conflicts of interests to avoid duplication of services and resources. During this time, it was not surprising for two units within the organization to compete for the same customers by selling them similar products. As such, organizational change was inevitable to keep Intel’s core operations in perspective.

Overall Conclusions

It cannot escape mention that Barett’s intentions for the organizations were genuine and healthy, but they were implemented in a rapid and haphazard manner. Intel, by any standards, needed to reorganize its operations to make it more nibble and avoid duplication of operations.

Furthermore, external environmental factors such as stiff competition and dwindling markets for Intel’s products demanded action in the form of restructuring operations. In the light of this, Barrett was justified to carry out the changes. He had to create better conditions for the organization to remain competitive by coming up with new products to diversify its operations.

However, the pace by which these changes were implemented nearly left everyone, including customers, confused. The rapid reorganization never came close to enhancing the decentralization and delegation of decision making – Barrett’s pet project.

Instead, managers were being placed in charge of new and emerging markets, products and services about which they had very limited knowledge. To add on to these, Barrett enlisted the services of outside consultants to transform the culture of the organization. In this, Barrett failed to steer the organization to the right direction since organizational culture should transform itself from within.