Intel co-founder Gordon Moore has passed away
Gordon Moore, co-founder and former CEO of Intel, has passed away at the age of 94. He was the last surviving member of the Intel Trinity, which also included his co-founder Robert Noyce and their first employee Andy Grove. Moore and Noyce previously worked with the co-inventor of the transistor, William Shockley, before helping found Fairchild Semiconductor. In 1968, the two struck out on their own and founded NM Electronics, which eventually became Intel.
A few years before that, in 1965, Moore wrote a paper envisioning the miniaturization of computers. To be precise, he predicted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year, leading to the creation and production of smaller and more powerful chips that would in turn enable advances in technology. His prediction was called “Moore̵[ads1]7;s Law”, and it was proven accurate in the years that followed. In 1975, he adjusted his estimate of a doubling of transistors to every two years, although now top chipmakers disagree about whether Moore’s Law still holds.
In 1979, Moore was named chairman and CEO of Intel before relinquishing the latter role in 1987. He apparently acted as a mediator between Noyce and Grove, and it was he and Grove who decided that Intel would focus on microprocessors rather than continuing with its memorial service. The rest, as they say, is history. Before Moore retired completely from his duties at Intel in 2006, he and his wife established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation with $5 billion in funding. The foundation supported environmental conservation efforts, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area, and donated to various educational institutions’ science and technology departments.
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