Inside Intel - Tapa dura

Acerca del autor

Tim Jackson writes a technology column for the ‘Financial Times’ newspaper. The author of ‘Virgin King: Inside Richard Branson’s Business Empire’ (HarperCollins 1994) and ‘Turning Japanese’ (HarperCollins 1993), he worked formerly as a foreign correspondent for the ‘Economist’ and the ‘Independent’ in Tokyo and Brussels. He is currently working on a book about the Sainsbury family.

De la contraportada

It is December 1994. Intel Corporation is under fire from the world's media for mishandling a flaw in their flagship Pentium processor. Andy Grove, the company's chief executive, faces a stark choice. Should he write off half a billion dollars and offer free replacements to all customers? Or should he continue to insist that the customers are wrong about Pentium, and risk destroying the company's public image?

Intel exerts industrial muscle on the same scale as Microsoft, yet its customers and PC users have little idea of the realities that lie behind its much-promoted logo. Its technical triumphs are matched by aggressive marketing and by millions spent on lawsuits to preserve its dominance and its secrets.

Founded by two of Silicon Valley's most gifted engineers, Intel has been run for most of its history by Grove, a brilliant and hard-driving scientist who fled communist Hungary and waited at tables to put himself through college in New York. With the motto that only the paranoid survive, Grove has moulded Intel in his own image, and built it into one of the most powerful and successful companies in America.

The Pentium incident is by no means the only drama in Intel's history. As the company finds itself dragged into the limelight by its own consumer marketing, this book tells for the first time the gripping human story of the triumphs, ideas and rivalries that have brought riches to Intel's founders, and have turned the personal computer into a tool on everyone's desk.

Brilliantly written, with an extraordinary grasp of its material, 'Inside Intel' has all the dramatic tension of a first-rate thriller, and establishes Tim Jackson alongside Bryan Burrough and Michael Lewis as one of the best contemporary business writers.