Intel's 40th birthday

The 18th of July 2009 was Intel's 40th birthday. To celebrate the company's birthday, the employees of Intel are going to perform one million hours of charity work this year. 

A quick calculation shows that Intel has been founded in 1968. Intel's first computerchip was released in 1971: the Intel 4004. 

In 1981 IBM chose to use an Intel-chip to power a new type of computer: the PC or Personal Computer. 

IBM's decision was the foundation of the computer- and internetrevolution of the 90's. A computerchip, also called processor or CPU, has had a huge impact on our world: from the way we communicate to digital animation films, it's all controlled by these processors. 

Computerchips use hundreds of millions of transistors which switch on and off several billion times every second. In that way they generate the digital zero's and ones a computer can calculate with, process text, display images, play DVD's and so on.

A quarter of Intel's chips are distributed in the Netherlands, through intels distribution center in Schiphol-Rijk. Each week enough chips land there to fill two Boeing 747's. These chips are shipped fom Holland to retailers in Europe, the Middle-east and Afrika. 

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