Intel Architecture Labs, also known as IAL, is the development arm of Intel Corporation for the "Intel Architecture" segment of its business. In 2003 this was over 86% of Intel's total revenue and 138% of its total operating income.
Originally IAL did research into both hardware and software initiatives, but the latter became de-emphasized after the efforts collided with similar activities by Microsoft. For example, Native Signal Processing (NSP) was a software initiative to allow Intel-based PCs to have the characteristics of dedicated signal processing hardware used for specialize applications. Once Microsoft refused to support NSP in its operating systems however, NSP died as an orphan and few IAL projects have dared to risk competing with Microsoft since.
However, IAL successes in the hardware world are legendary, and include PCI, USB, AGP, the Northbridge/Southbridge core logic architecture and PCI Express (the now-dominant architecture for multi-processor servers).
Intel was founded in 1968 by Gordon E. Moore (a chemist and physicist) and Robert Noyce (a physicist and co-inventor of the integrated circuit) when they left Fairchild Semiconductor.
During the 1990s, Intel'sIntelArchitectureLabs (IAL) was responsible for many of the hardware innovations of the personal computer, including the PCI Bus, the PCI Express (PCIe) bus, the Universal Serial Bus (USB), and the now-dominant architecture for multi-processor servers.
Intel's dominance in the x86 microprocessor market led to numerous charges of antitrust violations over the years, including FTC investigations in both the late 1980s and in 1999, and civil actions such as the 1997 suit by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and a patent suit by Intergraph.
IAL was created by Intel Vice-President Ron Whittier together with Craig Kinnie and Steven McGeady to develop the hardware and software innovations considered to be lacking from PC OEMs and Microsoft in the late 1980s and 1990s.
IAL also tangled with Microsoft by supporting Netscape and their early browser, and by producing a fast native x86 port of the Java system.
In 2001, after the departure of all of its creators, IAL was disbanded and replaced with the very different IntelLabs under Pat Gelsinger, though most of the creative talent that had been in IAL was by then scattered across the company or had left entirely.
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