ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 19, 1996 TAG: 9611190098
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LAS VEGAS
SOURCE: Associated Press
TELEVISION is what American consumers like, Intel's boss says, and for computer companies to thrive, they'd better get tuned in.
The computer revolution spawned by the microprocessor will stall, Intel Corp. CEO Andy Grove said Monday, unless companies win the business of people who still spend their leisure time in front of television.
``Simply put, we are in a war for consumer eyeballs,'' Grove told several thousand people in the keynote speech at Comdex, the computer industry's biggest trade show. ``We have to go after [consumers] with irresistible and compelling features.''
Thanks to improvements in microprocessors - a market Intel created and dominates - personal computers have popularized the concept of multimedia entertainment, the mixture of text, sound, video and graphics. With the rise of the Internet, the personal computer also has become an important tool for communication.
Computers won't be able to keep up their phenomenal growth, Grove said, unless they enhance and combine those features with the realistic visual displays of television.
Only that will turn millions of couch potatoes into mouse potatoes.
``The key for us is to recognize that our business is not just about building and selling PCs,'' he said. ``The business we are in is the delivery of information and lifelike, interactive experiences.''
Grove appeared optimistic that could be done, putting a souped-up Intel PC through its visual paces. It produced far better video and sound of a scene from the movie ``Twister'' and gave a more realistic picture of a simulated village than computers with Intel's earlier processors.
Grove also reminisced Monday about the microprocessor, which Intel introduced 25 years ago this month.
Intel made memory chips to store data in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It developed the microprocessor - in effect a tiny computer - for Busicom, a Japanese company that wanted an all-purpose chip for electronic calculators.
Since then, the microprocessor has become powerful and commonplace. It serves as the brain of millions of PCs and is found in cars, appliances, watches, video games and other electronic products.
The first microprocessor, the 4004, was primitive by today's standards, having 2,300 transistors. Nonetheless, that chip, one-eighth of an inch wide and one-sixth of an inch long, was as powerful as the Eniac, the first electronic computer, a 30-ton behemoth with 18,000 vacuum tubes.
Today, microprocessors tend to follow Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder and chairman Gordon Moore: Technological advances will regularly cause the number of transistors on a chip to double. Currently that takes about 18 months.
Current microprocessors have millions of transistors; Intel's leading-edge processor, the Pentium Pro, has 5.5 million.
Grove, envisioning design improvements that require fewer transistors, predicted chip makers in 2011 will produce microprocessors with 1 billion transistors.
Making it happen won't be easy or cheap, Grove said. Intel built its first factory in 1973 for $3million. Its latest will cost $2.5billion.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. ``Simply put, we are in a war for consumerby CNBeyeballs,'' Andy Grove tells colleagues in his keynote address at
Comdex, the computer industry's biggest trade show. color.