Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, has passed away

Gordon Moore, co-founder and former CEO of Intel, has it Passed away at age 94. He was the last surviving member of Intel Trinity, which also included fellow founder Robert Noyce and first hired Andy Grove. Moore and Noyce had 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 earlier, in 1965, Moore had written a paper that researched the miniaturization of computers. To be precise, he expected the number of transistors in an integrated circuit to double each year, leading to the creation and production of smaller and more powerful chips that would, in turn, enable advances in technology. He called his predictions “Moore’s Law,” and they have been proven accurate in the years since. By 1975, he had revised his estimate to double transistors every two years, even though he was now a major chip manufacturer. Disagree About whether Moore’s Law is still in effect.

In 1979, Moore was appointed Chairman and CEO of Intel before relinquishing the latter position in 1987. He appears to have acted as an intermediary between Noyce and Grove, and it was he and Grove who decided that Intel should focus on microprocessors rather than continue its work in memory field. The rest, as they say, is history. Before Moore completely stepped down from his duties at Intel in 2006, he and his wife founded the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation with $5 billion in funding. The foundation has supported conservation efforts, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area, and donated to various science and technology departments in educational institutions.

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