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 fellow founding member Robert Noyce and their first associate Andy Grove. Moore and Noyce previously worked with transistor co-inventor William Shockley before helping found Fairchild Semiconductor. In 1968, the two went into business for themselves and founded NM Electronics, which eventually became Intel.
A few years earlier, in 1965, Moore wrote a paper contemplating the miniaturization of computers. In fact, he predicted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year, leading to the development and production of smaller and more powerful chips, which in turn would enable technological advances. His prediction was dubbed “Moore’s Law” and proved correct over the following years. By 1975, he adjusted his estimate for transistors doubling to every two years, although top chipmakers now disagree as to whether Moore’s Law still applies.
In 1979, Moore was appointed chairman and CEO of Intel, before stepping down from the latter role in 1987. Apparently he acted as an intermediary between Noyce and Grove, and he and Grove were the ones who decided Intel would focus on microprocessors as a continuation of the memory business. The rest, as they say, is history. Before fully retiring from Intel in 2006, Moore and his wife established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation with $5 billion in funding. The foundation supported conservation efforts, primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area, and made donations to the science and technology departments of various educational institutions.
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