Gordon Moore, the Intel Corp. co-founder whose theory on computer-chip development became the yardstick for progress in the electronics industry, has died. He was 94.<\/p>\n
Moore died peacefully, surrounded by family at his home in Hawaii on Friday, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation said in a statement.<\/p>\n
A founder of industry pioneer\u00a0Fairchild Semiconductor, Moore in 1968 co-founded Intel, which grew into the world\u2019s largest semiconductor maker at one point. The Santa Clara, California-based company supplies about 80% of the world\u2019s personal computers with their most important part, the microprocessor. Moore was chief executive officer from 1975 to 1987.<\/p>\n
Intel and other semiconductor makers still develop products according to a version of\u00a0Moore\u2019s Law<\/a>, the scientist\u2019s 1965 observation that the number of transistors on a computer chip \u2014 which determines the speed, memory and capabilities of an electronic device \u2014 doubles every year. The law, which Moore revised in 1975, remains a yardstick for progress both within and beyond the chip industry, even as its continued applicability is a topic of debate.<\/p>\n Moore\u2019s observation was fundamental to Intel\u2019s rise to prominence. The company poured increasing sums of money into manufacturing the tiny electronic components, outpacing its rivals. The torrid rate of progress made Intel\u2019s technology the hardware heart of the personal computer revolution, then the internet revolution, until the company\u2019s Asian rivals challenged its leadership.<\/p>\n Executives of tech companies around the world paid homage to Moore.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world lost a giant in Gordon Moore, who was one of Silicon Valley\u2019s founding fathers and a true visionary who helped pave the way for the technological revolution,\u201d Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in a tweet. \u201cAll of us who followed owe him a debt of gratitude.\u201d<\/p>\n Many took Moore\u2019s death personally, a testament to the interconnected world of tech. \u201cHis vision inspired so many of us to pursue technology, was an inspiration to me,\u201d Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai tweeted.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very much saddened by the news of Gordon\u2019s death,\u201d said Morris Chang, founder of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., in a comment emailed to Bloomberg News. \u201cHe was a great and respected friend for more than sixty years. With Gordon gone, almost all of my first generation semiconductor colleagues are gone.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, most chip industry leaders and observers would argue that Moore\u2019s Law no longer holds. Some of the layers of materials used to build semiconductors are only an atom thick, meaning they cannot be shrunk further. At such tiny geometries the properties of those materials that make them semiconductors break down. That destroys their usefulness as the microscopic switches used to represent the most basic form of electronic information.<\/p>\n But the underlying principle of Moore\u2019s Law continues to influence investment decisions.<\/p>\n \u201cIntel will be the steward of Moore\u2019s Law for decades to come,\u201d Intel Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger said in a January 2022 interview. He said the law \u201cis alive and we\u2019re going to keep it very well.\u201d<\/p>\n Carver Mead, an engineering professor at the California Institute of Technology, came up with the name Moore\u2019s Law. Moore himself expressed surprise at its influence and longevity and preferred to downplay it.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to get across, here\u2019s an idea where the technology is going to evolve rapidly, and it\u2019s going to have a major impact on the cost of electronics,\u201d Moore recalled for a\u00a0video<\/a>\u00a0produced by the Chemical Heritage Foundation. \u201cThat was the main point I was trying to get across, that this was going to be the path to low-cost electronics.\u201d<\/p>\n Moore was director of research and development at Fairchild when he made his famous projection in an\u00a0article<\/a>, \u201cCramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits,\u201d for the April 19, 1965, edition of Electronics magazine. Noting that the most cost-efficient circuit at that time held 50 transistors, he predicted that number would roughly double each year to 65,000. Modern microprocessors have billions of transistors.<\/p>\n In the same article he wrote: \u201cIntegrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers, or at least terminals connected to a central computer, automatic controls for automobiles and personal portable communications equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n Revising his law in 1975, Moore said components per chip would grow half as quickly, doubling every two years rather than every year. An Intel colleague, David House, came up with the often-quoted corollary that a chip\u2019s performance, due to both the number and quality of transistors, would double every 18 months.<\/p>\n Intel\u2019s proxy statement in 2006 showed Moore owned 173 million shares. That\u2019s the last time his name appears in the company\u2019s regulatory filings. His net worth was about $7.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.<\/p>\n In 2000, Moore set up the Gordon and Betty Moore\u00a0Foundation<\/a>, which reported assets of $9.5 billion as of 2021, making it one of the biggest private grant-making foundations in the US. It supports environmental conservation, patient care and scientific research worldwide, as well as local causes in the San Francisco Bay area. Moore said his concern for the environment stemmed from his love of fishing.<\/p>\n Among their major gifts, Moore and his wife gave $600 million to Caltech, located in Pasadena, California; $200 million to Caltech and the University of California to build the world\u2019s most powerful\u00a0optical telescope<\/a>; and $100 million to the University of California at Davis to build a nursing school.<\/p>\n Gordon Earle Moore was born on Jan. 3, 1929, in San Francisco and raised in Pescadero, California. His family moved to Redwood City, California, when he was 10. His father, Walter, was a deputy sheriff. His mother, Florence Almira Williamson, owned a small general store.<\/p>\n Moore saw a chemistry set at a neighbor\u2019s house and decided he wanted to be a chemist. He began experimenting by making rockets and explosives and studied chemistry at San Jose State University. There, he met his wife, the former Betty Whittaker. They would have two children, Kenneth and Steven.<\/p>\n Moore transferred to the University of California at Berkeley and, in 1950, became the first person in his family to graduate from college. In 1954, he received a doctorate in physics and chemistry from Caltech.<\/p>\n He landed a job as a researcher at Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Applied Physics Laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland.\u00a0William Shockley<\/a>, who had created the transistor at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and who would share the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics, recruited Moore to his Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory near Palo Alto, California.<\/p>\n Moore and seven co-workers, including Robert Noyce, left to found Fairchild in 1957 with $3,500 of their own money and a $1.5 million investment from Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. Shockley dubbed them the \u201cTraitorous Eight.\u201d Noyce, in the late 1950s, helped invent the integrated circuit, the basis of all chip designs to this day. He died in 1990.<\/p>\n Noyce and Moore formed Intel, a contraction of \u201cintegrated electronics,\u201d in a former Union Carbide factory in Mountain View, the heart of what they would help build into Silicon Valley. Moore\u2019s first title was executive vice president. Andy Grove, another Fairchild employee, soon joined them.<\/p>\n In 1971, Intel introduced its first microprocessor, holding more than 2,000 transistors. Its 8080 microprocessor was in the Altair 8800, introduced in 1975 and widely considered the first successful personal computer. In 1981, IBM selected Intel\u2019s 8088 microprocessor to power its\u00a0first personal computer<\/a>.<\/p>\n Moore became president and CEO in 1975, then chairman and CEO in 1979. Grove succeeded him as CEO in 1987, and Moore retired from Intel\u2019s board in 2001 at age 72, in accordance with a mandatory retirement-age policy that he instituted.<\/p>\n Moore \u201cdoes not boast, although his record of achievement provides a great deal to boast about,\u201d Richard Tedlow wrote in his 2006 biography of Grove. \u201cHe appears to be, that is to say, simply a regular person.\u201d Tedlow quoted Grove calling Moore \u201ca smart guy with no airs.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike succeeding Intel leaders who rebutted predictions of Moore\u2019s Law\u2019s demise, Moore forecast its irrelevance.<\/p>\n \u201cSomeday it has to stop,\u201d Moore said at an event in 2015 to commemorate his law\u2019s 50th anniversary. \u201cNo exponential thing like this goes on forever.\u201d<\/p>\n Moore is survived by Betty Irene Whitaker, whom he married in 1950, as well as sons Kenneth and Steven and four grandchildren.<\/p>\n Gordon Moore, the Intel co-founder whose theory on computer-chip development became the yardstick for progress in the electronics industry, has died at the age of 94.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":485261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40380],"tags":[36215,131],"class_list":["post-485255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-gordon-moore","tag-intel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485263,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485255\/revisions\/485263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Alive and Well<\/h3>\n
1975 Revision<\/h3>\n
Sheriff\u2019s Son<\/h3>\n
Forms Intel<\/h3>\n
Now read: Google Bard plagiarised CPU testing article, apologised, and then accused user of faking incident<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"