Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, a semiconductor industry pioneer whose Moore’s Law predicted decades of steady growth in computing power, died Friday at the age of 94, the company said.
Intel (INTC) and Moore’s Philanthropic Family Foundation said he died surrounded by family at his home in Hawaii.
Moore, who helped launch Intel in 1968, was the sleeved engineer in a triumvirate of technology luminaries who eventually built “Intel Inside” processors into more than 80% of the world’s personal computers.
In an article he wrote in 1965, Moore noted that thanks to technological improvements, the number of transistors on microchips had roughly doubled every year since integrated circuits were invented a few years earlier.
His prediction that the trend would continue became known as “Moore’s Law” and, later changed to biennial, helped Intel and competing chipmakers aggressively allocate their research and development resources to ensure this rule of thumb came true.
“Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers – or at least terminals connected to a central computer – automatic controls for cars and personal portable communications devices,” Moore wrote in his article, two decades before the PC revolution and more than 40 Years before Apple released the iPhone.
According to Moore’s article, chips became exponentially more efficient and cheaper, helped fuel much of the world’s technological progress for half a century, and enabled the advent of not only personal computers but also the Internet and Silicon Valley giants like Apple (AAPL). , Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG).
“It sure is nice to be in the right place at the right time,” Moore said in an interview circa 2005. “I was very fortunate to work in the infancy of the semiconductor industry. And I’ve had the opportunity to grow from when we couldn’t make a single silicon transistor to when we could fit 1.7 billion of them on a chip! It was a phenomenal ride.”
In recent years, Intel’s competitors such as Nvidia (NVDA) have claimed that Moore’s Law no longer applies as improvements in chip manufacturing have slowed.
But despite manufacturing snags that have caused Intel to lose market share in recent years, current CEO Pat Gelsinger believes Moore’s Law still applies as the company invests billions of dollars in a turnaround effort.
“Entrepreneur by Accident”
Although he predicted the personal computer movement, Moore told Forbes magazine that he didn’t buy a home computer himself until the late 1980s.
A native of San Francisco, Moore earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1954.
He worked at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, where he met future Intel co-founder Robert Noyce. As part of the Traitorous Eight, they set out in 1957 to found Fairchild Semiconductor. In 1968, Moore and Noyce left Fairchild to found the memory chip company that would soon be called Intel, an acronym for Integrated Electronics.
Moore and Noyce’s first hire was another Fairchild colleague, Andy Grove, who would lead Intel through much of its explosive growth in the 1980s and 1990s.
Moore described himself to Fortune Magazine as a “casual entrepreneur” who had no burning urge to start a business – but he, Noyce and Grove formed a powerful partnership.
While Noyce had theories for solving chip engineering problems, Moore was the person who rolled up his sleeves and spent countless hours tweaking transistors and refining Noyce’s broad and sometimes ill-defined ideas, efforts that often paid off. Grove filled the group as Intel’s operations and management expert.
Moore’s apparent talent also inspired other engineers who worked for him, and under his and Noyce’s leadership, Intel invented the microprocessors that would pave the way for the personal computer revolution.
He served as executive president until 1975, although he and CEO Noyce considered themselves equals. Moore served as chairman and CEO from 1979 to 1987 and remained chairman until 1997.
In 2023, Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $7.2 billion.
Moore was a longtime sport fisherman who pursued his passion around the world and in 2000 he and his wife Betty started a foundation focused on environmental issues. The foundation, which undertook projects like protecting the Amazon Basin and Salmon Rivers in the US, Canada and Russia, was funded by Moore’s donation of about $5 billion in Intel stock.
He also donated hundreds of millions to his alma mater, the California Institute of Technology, to keep it at the forefront of technology and science, and supported the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project known as SETI.
Moore received the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, from President George W. Bush in 2002. He and his wife had two children.