IBM ThinkPad Z61 Quanta BW2 Motherboard Schematic Circuit Diagram
IBM ThinkPad Z61 Quanta BW2 Motherboard Schematic Circuit Diagram
How PC hardware dominates Intel
I can see why many people don't realize this instantly. How many people genuinely buy an Intel-branded computer, for example? No, not simply one that says Intel Inside on it (which just refers to the fact that the system contains an Intel CPU), but one that Intel created, manufactured, or even purchased. Many people today have Intel PCs, believe it or not!
Intel does not sell full PCs to end-users, therefore this does not indicate that customers purchased their systems from Intel. You can't order a system from Intel right now, and you can't buy an Intel-branded system from anybody else. What I'm talking about are the key components within, particularly the motherboard and the motherboard's heart—the chipset.
How did Intel come to have such a stronghold over the insides of our computers? Since IBM adopted the Intel 8088 CPU in the first IBM PC in 1981, Intel has been the leading PC processor provider. Intel naturally controlled the chips required to incorporate their CPUs into system designs by controlling the processor. This prompted Intel to enter the chipset market. It began selling chipsets in 1989 with the 82350 Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) chipset, and by 1993, it had become the biggest main motherboard chipset provider, coinciding with the introduction of the Pentium CPU. Now, I see Intel thinking that because it already creates the processor and all of the other chips needed to create a motherboard, why not cut out the middleman and make the whole thing? The answer to this question, as well as an important turning point in the industry, came in 1994 when Intel became the world's largest-volume motherboard producer. By 1997, Intel had produced more motherboards than the following eight manufacturers combined, with more than 30 million boards sold valued at more than $3.6 billion!
