Wintel is a term used to describe desktop computers and servers of the type commonly used in homes and businesses since the late 1980s (these are PC compatible computers running a version of Microsoft Windows). The portmanteau term is a concatenation of Windows (Microsoft's operating environment) and Intel (the originator of the x86 processor architecture used in many of today's PC compatible computers). A BlueGene supercomputer cabinet. ... One of the first PCs from IBM - the IBM PC model 5150. ... A BlueGene supercomputer cabinet. ... Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of proprietary software operating systems by Microsoft. ... Look up portmanteau word in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of proprietary software operating systems by Microsoft. ... Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ... Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC, SEHK: 4335), founded in 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation, is an American multinational corporation that is best known for designing and manufacturing microprocessors and specialized integrated circuits. ... x86 or 80x86 is the generic name of a microprocessor architecture first developed and manufactured by Intel. ... One of the first PCs from IBM - the IBM PC model 5150. ... A BlueGene supercomputer cabinet. ...

Background

Even more so than the mini-computer market which preceded it, the micro-computer market when it began in the late 1970s was led by a host of small, innovative companies, often startups. With the market proved by the earliest manufacturers, larger companies soon began to take a hand, sometimes successfully (Tandy, Hewlett-Packard), sometimes not (Texas Instruments, DEC). One by one, the majors in the "big iron" market—mainframe and mini-computer makers—recognised the emergent boom in the micro-computer market. Introduction We all probably heard of supercomputers. ... Apple IIc Generally, a microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor (µP) as its CPU. Another general characteristic of these computers is that they occupy physically small amounts of space. ... A startup company is a company with a limited operating history. ... Tandy is a name which can refer to Tandy Corporation - former name of the RadioShack Corporation Tandy Computers was the computer division of the Tandy Corporation, which manufactured the TRS-80 and Tandy Color Computer, among others. ... The Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), commonly known as HP, is a very large, global company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. ... Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), better known in the electronics industry (and popularly) as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, USA, renowned for developing and commercializing semiconductor and computer technology. ... The DEC logo Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the computer industry. ... Big Iron is a country music ballad by Marty Robbins, originally released as an album track on Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs in September 1959, then as a single in February 1960. ...

By the early 1980s, the chaos and incompatibility of the first years had given way to a smaller number of industry standards, including the S-100 bus, CP/M, the Apple II, Microsoft BASIC in ROM, and the 5.25 inch floppy drive. Despite the presence of informal standards which allowed a fair measure of interoperability between different machines from different manufacturers, no single company controlled the industry, and fierce competition ensured that innovation in both hardware and software was the rule rather than the exception. Most of the software used today is directly derived from the ideas that grew out of this creative bonanza—one example is the spreadsheet, but there are countless others. The S-100 bus, IEEE696-1983 (withdrawn), was an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800, generally considered today to be the first personal computer. The S-100 bus was the first industry standard bus for the microcomputer industry, and S-100 computers, processor... CP/M was an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. ... The Apple II was one of the most popular personal computers of the 1980s. ... Microsoft BASIC is the foundation product of the Microsoft company. ... Rom is also the name of a toy and comic book character Rom (Spaceknight). ... A floppy disk is a data storage device that comprises a circular piece of thin, flexible (hence floppy) magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic wallet. ... Screenshot of a spreadsheet made with OpenOffice. ...

In 1981 the largest and oldest computer firm of them all, IBM, finally entered the microcomputer market, with a machine that was created by a small subdivision of the firm and was very unusual by their standards, insofar as it was largely sourced from outside component suppliers, technically unambitious, very similar to a number of existing 16-bit 8088-based micro-computers, ran third-party operating systems, and above all, had an open architecture. It was called the IBM PC and it became the most successful single computer of all time. An Intel 8088 microprocessor The Intel 8088 is an Intel microprocessor based on the 8086, with 16-bit registers and an 8-bit external data bus. ... Open architecture is a type of computer architecture that allows users to upgrade their hardware in all of the computer hardware & components (for example the IBM PC has an open architecture). ... IBM PC (IBM 5150) with keyboard and green screen monochrome monitor (IBM 5151), running MS-DOS 5. ...

The key feature of the IBM PC was that despite its technical mediocrity and higher than market price, it had IBM's enormous public respect behind it. It was an accident of history that the IBM PC happened to have an Intel CPU (instead of the technically superior Motorola 68000 that had been tipped for it, or an IBM in-house design), and that it shipped with IBM PC-DOS (a licensed version of Microsoft's MS-DOS rather than the technically superior industry-standard CP/M-86 operating system), but an accident that was to have enormous significance in later years. The Motorola 68000 is a 32-bit CISC microprocessor from Motorola. ... IBM PC-DOS was one of the three major operating systems that dominated the personal computer market from about 1985 to 1995. ... Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... CP/M-86 was a version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. ...

Because the IBM PC was an IBM product with the IBM badge, personal computers (as they were beginning to be called) became respectable. It became much easier for a conservative business to justify buying a microcomputer than it had been even a year or two before—and easiest of all to justify buying the IBM Personal Computer, and thanks to the open nature of the PC the architecture and its similarities with earlier CP/M computers the PC soon had thousands of different third-party add-in cards and software packages available for almost every imaginable purpose. This made the PC the only viable option for many, as the PC was the only platform that supported all hardware and software they needed, allowing the PC to snatch the business market, a market with very diverse software requirements from customer to customer, from under the nose of its competitors.

Industry competitors took one of several approaches to the changing market. Some (such as Apple, Atari, and Acorn) persevered with their independent and quite different systems. Others (notably world number two Digital, Hewlett-Packard, and Apricot) concentrated on making similar but technically superior models. Other early market leaders (such as Tandy-Radio Shack, Texas Instruments and Commodore) stayed with outdated architectures and proprietary operating systems for some time before belatedly realising which way the market wind was blowing and switching to the most successful long-term business strategy, which was to build a machine that duplicated the IBM PC as closely as possible and sell it for a slightly lower price, or with higher performance. Given the very conservative engineering of the early IBM personal computers and their higher than average prices, this was not a terribly difficult task at first, bar only the great technical challenge of crafting a BIOS that duplicated the function of the IBM BIOS exactly but did not infringe on copyrights. Apple Inc. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Acorn Computers Ltd. ... The DEC logo Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the computer industry. ... Apricot Computers was a British manufacturer of business personal computers, originally founded in 1965 as Applied Computer Techniques (ACT). ... Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore International, an electronics company who was a major player in the 1980s home computer field. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

The two early leaders in this last strategy were both start-up companies: Columbia Computers and Compaq. They were the first to achieve reputations for very close compatibility with the IBM machines, which meant that they could run software written for the IBM machine without recompilation. Before long, IBM had the best-selling personal computer in the world and at least two of the next-best sellers were, for practical purposes, identical. June 1982: Columbia Data Products introduced the MPC - Multi Personal Computer. ... Compaq Computer Corporation is an American personal computer company founded in 1982, and now a brand name of Hewlett-Packard. ...

For the software industry, the effect was profound. First, it meant that it was rational to write for the IBM PC and its clones as a high priority, and port versions for less common systems at leisure.

Second (and even more importantly), where software written in pre-IBM days had to be careful to use as plain a subset of the possible techniques as practicable (so as to be able to run on any hardware that ran CP/M), with a major part of the market now all using the same exact hardware (or a very similar clone of it) it was practical to take advantage of any and every hardware-specific feature offered by the IBM.

Independent BIOS companies like Award, Chips & Technologies, and Phoenix began to market clean room BIOS that was 100% compatible with IBM's, and from that time on any competent computer manufacturer could achieve IBM compatibility as a matter of routine. For the meaning of Cleanroom engineering in software development, see Cleanroom Software Engineering. ...

From around 1984, the market was fast growing but relatively stable. There was as yet no sign of the "Win" half of "Wintel," though Microsoft were achieving enormous revenues from DOS sales both to IBM and to an ever-growing list of other manufacturers had agreed to buy an MS-DOS license for every machine they made, even those that shipped with competing products. As for Intel, every PC made either had an Intel processor or one made by a second source supplier under license from Intel. Intel and Microsoft had enormous revenues, Compaq and a thousand other makers between them made far more machines than IBM, but the power to decide the shape of the personal computer rested firmly in IBM's hands.

The rise of Wintel

In 1987, IBM made a bold and ultimately disastrous business decision. Although the open architecture of the PC and its successors had been a great success for them, and they were the biggest single manufacturer, most of the market was buying faster and cheaper IBM compatible machines made by other firms. IBM chose to introduce their PS/2 line. The PS/2s remained software compatible, but the hardware was quite different. It introduced the technically superior Microchannel bus for higher speed communication within the system, but failed to maintain the open AT bus (later called the ISA bus), which meant that none of the millions of existing add-in cards would function. The new IBM machines, in other words, were not IBM compatible. This article is about the Personal System/2 computer line made by IBM. There is another article on the PlayStation 2 made by Sony. ... Micro Channel architecture (in practice almost always shortened to MCA) was a proprietary 16 or 32-bit parallel computer bus created by IBM in the 1980s for use on their new PS/2 computers. ... Industry Standard Architecture (in practice almost always shortened to ISA) is a bus standard for IBM compatibles introduced in 1984 that extends the XT bus architecture to 16 bits. ...

In addition, IBM planned the PS/2 in such a way that for both technical and legal reasons it would be very difficult to clone. Instead, IBM offered to sell a PS/2 licence to anyone who could afford the royalty—but that they would not only require a royalty for every PS/2 compatible machine sold, but also a payment for every IBM compatible machine the particular maker had ever made in the past.

Many PC manufacturers signed up as PS/2 licensees. (Apricot, who had lost badly by persevering with their "better PC than IBM" strategy up until this time, was one of them, but there were many others.) Many others decided to hold off before committing themselves. Some major manufacturers, known as the Gang of Nine, decided to group together and decide on a bus type that would be open to all manufacturers, as fast as or faster than IBM's Microchannel, and yet still retain backward compatibility with ISA. The Gang of Nine was a group of IBM competitors who came together in 1988 to build the EISA architecture, to compete with IBMs MCA. These companies were AST Research, Compaq Computer, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, NEC, Olivetti, Tandy, WYSE, and Zenith Data Systems. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

This was the crucial turning point: the industry as a whole was no longer content to let IBM make all the major decisions about technical direction. In the event, the new EISA bus was itself a commercial failure: by the time it was finalised the much cheaper VESA Local Bus had removed most of the need for it, the Lotus-Intel-Microsoft joint memory standard had taken RAM compatibility out of the equation, and Intel's PCI bus was just around the corner. But although very few EISA systems were sold, it had achieved its purpose: IBM no longer controlled the computer industry. Three EISA Slots. ... The VESA Local Bus (usually shortened to VLB) is a local bus defined by the Video Electronics Standards Association, mostly used in personal computers based on the Intel 80486 CPU. VESA Local Bus worked alongside the ISA bus; it acted as a high-speed conduit for memory-mapped I/O... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

At around this same time, the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, Microsoft's Windows operating environment started to become popular, and Microsoft's competitor Digital Research started to recover a share of the DOS market with DR-DOS. IBM planned to replace DOS with the vastly superior OS/2 (originally an IBM/Microsoft joint venture, and unlike the PS/2 hardware, highly backward compatible), but Microsoft preferred to push the industry in the direction of its own product, Windows. With IBM suffering its greatest ever public humiliation in the wake of the PS/2 disaster, massive financial losses, and a marked lack of company unity or direction, Microsoft's combination of a soft marketing voice and a big financial stick was effective: Windows became the de-facto standard. The Windows logo used since November 2006. ... Digital Research, Inc. ... DR-DOS is a PC DOS-compatible operating system for IBM PC-compatible personal computers, originally developed by Gary Kildalls Digital Research and derived from CP/M-86. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

For the competing computer manufacturers, large or small, the only common factors to provide joint technical leadership were operating software from Microsoft, and CPUs from Intel.

The Wintel dominance

Over the following years, both firms in the Wintel partnership would attempt to extend their monopolies. Intel made a successful major push into the motherboard and chipset markets—becoming the largest motherboard manufacturer in the world and, at one stage, almost the only chipset manufacturer—but badly fumbled its attempt to move into the graphics chip market, and (from 1991) faced sharp competition in its core CPU territory from AMD and Cyrix. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ... Cyrix corporate logo Cyrix was a CPU manufacturer that began in 1988 as a specialist supplier of high-performance math co-processors for 286 and 386 systems. ...

Microsoft fared better. In 1990, Microsoft had two competitors in its core market (Digital Research and IBM), Intel had none. By 1996, Intel had two competitors in its core market (CPUs), while Microsoft had none. The integration of DOS into Windows 95 was the masterstroke: not only were the other operating system vendors frozen out, Microsoft could now require computer manufacturers to comply with its demands on pain of higher prices (as when it required IBM to stop actively marketing OS/2 or else pay more than twice as much for Windows 95 as its competitor Compaq) or by withholding "approved for Windows 95" endorsement (which was regarded as an essential hardware marketing tool). Microsoft was also able to require that free publicity be given over to them by hardware makers. (For example, the advertising symbols on all modern keyboards, or the strict license restrictions on what may or may not be displayed during system boot and on the Windows desktop.) Also, Microsoft were able to take over most of the networking market (formerly the domain of Lantastic and Novell) with Windows NT, and the business application market (formerly led by Lotus and WordPerfect) with Office. Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. ... LANtastic was a peer-to-peer local area network (LAN) operating system for DOS, Microsoft Windows and OS/2. ... Novell, Inc. ... Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. ... Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) is an American software company with its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... WordPerfect is a proprietary word processing application. ... Microsoft Office is a suite of productivity programs created or purchased by Microsoft and developed for Microsoft Windows, and Apples Mac OS and Mac OS X operating systems. ...

Although Microsoft is by far the dominant player in the Wintel partnership now, Intel's continuing influence should not be underestimated. Intel and Microsoft, once the closest of partners, have operated at an uneasy distance from one another since their first major dispute, which had to do with Intel's heavy investment in the 32-bit optimized Pentium Pro and Microsoft's delivery of an unexpectedly high proportion of 16-bit code in Windows 95. Both firms flirt with one-another's competitors from time to time, most notably with Microsoft's close relationship with AMD and the development of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition utilizing AMD-designed 64-bit extensions to the x86 architecture. Pentium Pro 256 KB Pentium Pro 512 KB Pentium Pro 1 MB Pentium Pro underside (256/512) Pentium II Overdrive The Pentium Pro is a sixth-generation x86 architecture microprocessor (P6 core) by Intel originally intended to replace the original Pentium in a full range of applications, but later reduced... Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition released on April 25, 2005 by Microsoft is a variation of the typical 32-bit Windows XP operating system for x86 personal computers. ...

The Wintel platform is the dominant desktop and laptop computer architecture, and has now spread to be a leading architecture in the server space.

Alternatives to Wintel

Although there are many alternatives to Wintel, most have only tiny market share. The two leading alternatives to Wintel on the desktop and small server are

• Linux and other free Unix-like operating systems such as FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, on a variety of architectures, but in particular commodity x86 computers
• Apple Computer's Macintosh computers with PowerPC or Intel processors. In August, 2006, Mac Pro was released (using the dual-core Intel Xeon Processor), completing the Mac's Intel switch. From that point, all new Apple computers use Intel processors. Before the complete transition from Power PC to the x86 platform, the new Macs with Intel processors were sometimes described as Macintels. Now, the most common description of a Mac with an Intel chip is not "a Macintel", but rather "an Intel Mac".

Other markets such as palmtops and mobile phones is now influenced by Wintel as well (even though the Wintel acceptance on the handheld market was low during the introduction era.) Linux (IPA pronunciation: ) is a Unix-like computer operating system family. ... FreeBSD is a Unix-like free operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) branch through the 386BSD and 4. ... NetBSD is a freely redistributable, open source version of the Unix-like BSD computer operating system. ... OpenBSD is a freely available Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. ... x86 or 80x86 is the generic name of a microprocessor architecture first developed and manufactured by Intel. ... Apple Inc. ... The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ... IBM PowerPC 601 Microprocessor PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for personal computers, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors as well. ... Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC, SEHK: 4335), founded in 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation, is an American multinational corporation that is best known for designing and manufacturing microprocessors and specialized integrated circuits. ... The Mac Pro is a Macintosh workstation manufactured by Apple Inc. ... The Apple Intel transition was the process of changing the CPU of Macintosh computers from PowerPC processors to Intel x86 processors. ... Palm IIIxe PDA Personal digital assistants (PDAs or palmtops) are handheld devices that were originally designed as personal organizers, but became much more versatile over the years. ... This article or section reads like an advertisement. ...

However, Pocket PC's market-share grew and is now, along with Palm Computing, the market leader of palmtop operating systems. Mobile phones: Previously dominating Symbian OS and the newer Windows Mobile OS are now the two biggest mobile phone operating systems. The Dell Axim x30, a Pocket PC A Pocket PC, abbreviated P/PC or PPC, is a handheld-sized computer that runs a specific version of the Windows CE operating system. ... Categories: Corporation stubs | Electronics companies of the United States | Defunct computer companies of the United States ... Symbian OS is an operating system with associated libraries, user interface frameworks and reference implementations of common tools, produced by Symbian. ... Windows Mobile is a compact operating system combined with a suite of basic applications for mobile devices based on the Microsoft Win32 API. Devices which run Windows Mobile include Pocket PCs, Smartphones, and Portable Media Centers. ...

See also

• Lintel
• PC compatible
• Network effect
• Platform (computing)
• Commodity computer
• Mactel
• AIM alliance, sought to challenge dominance of Wintel

The term Lintel is used to describe a computing platform consisting of the Linux operating system running on CPUs which are compatible with the x86 instruction set defined by Intel for their microprocessors. ... One of the first PCs from IBM - the IBM PC model 5150. ... A network effect is a characteristic that causes a good or service to have a value to a potential customer which depends on the number of other customers who own the good or are users of the service. ... In computing, a platform describes some sort of framework, either in hardware or software, which allows software to run. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Commodity computing. ... Mactel is a colloquial term for the Apple Macintosh computers planned to be released in 2006 and beyond, which will be based on Intel processors instead of the IBM PowerPC processors. ... AIM was an alliance formed in 1991 between Apple Computer, IBM and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. ...

External links

• Wintel definition (Webopedia)
• Moore's Law