Intel Co-Founder Gordon Moore of Moore’s Law Fame Dies at 94

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, the man behind “Moore’s Law‘, who became a driving force among makers of computers, phones and other electronics, died Friday at age 94.

Moore “defined the tech industry through his insight and vision,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a statement. “He was instrumental in revealing the power of transistors and inspiring technologists and entrepreneurs for decades.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook also paid tribute. “The world has lost a giant in Gordon Moore, who was one of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley and a true visionary who helped pave the way for the technological revolution,” Cook said in a tweet. “All of us who followed him owe him a debt of gratitude. May he rest in peace.”

In 1965, Moore predicted that as computer chip manufacturing improved, reducing component size, the number of transistors on a chip would double every year, resulting in a dramatic increase in performance and capability. A decade later, he changed the observation to every two years.

The “law” became a goal for tech companies to aspire to and established a pace of innovation that kept progress going.

“It created a metronome,” Genevieve Bell, a cultural anthropologist for Intel, told CNET in 2015, on the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law. “It gave us this incredible notion of constant progress that is constantly changing.”

This means, among other things, that your pocket phone is more powerful than a room-filling bank of computers was back then.

With chip components now down to the atomic scale, some said Moore’s Law had run its course. Others, however, argue that this will continue, thanks to manufacturing innovations such as building chips made up of not one but multiple wafers of silicon.

Moore was born in San Francisco in 1929 and later attended San Jose State University, University of California, Berkeley, and Caltech, where he earned a doctorate in chemistry.

In 1957, he co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor with, among others, Robert Noyce, which had helped invent the microchip, or integrated circuit, which is central to computer chip design and paved the way for the iPhone and other devices. countless other gadgets. In 1968, the two founded Intel, which became the world’s largest chipmaker, although it later gave up that crown.

Later, Moore went into philanthropy. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, established with his wife, provided grants for efforts focused on environmental conservation, scientific research, and higher education.

In 1990 Moore received the National Medal of Technology, and in 2002 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

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