Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who was among the pioneers in the semiconductor industry and known for his influential prediction Moore’s Law, passed away on Friday at the age of 94, as announced by Intel and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
The cause of his death was not disclosed.
Moore, who was originally from San Francisco, obtained a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1954. He started working at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory where he later met Robert Noyce, who would become his future Intel co-founder. In 1957, they left to establish Fairchild Semiconductor. Eventually, Moore and Noyce left Fairchild to form their own memory chip company, which was later named Intel, an abbreviation for Integrated Electronics, in 1968.
Moore had aspirations to become a teacher and deemed himself as an accidental entrepreneur.
Moore was famously known for his 1965 prediction (Moore’s law) where he said that the number of transistors on a microchip would double approximately every two years, while the cost of the chip stays the same or decreases. He added that innovations in technology would make computers more costly to build, but customers will be charged less over time because of the volume sold.
According to Asia Nikkei, Intel’s competitors, including Nvidia, have argued that Moore’s Law is no longer applicable as advancements in chip manufacturing have slowed down.
According to the New York Times, Moore together with Noyce, had created a group that advocated the use of the thumbnail-thin chips of silicon, a highly polished, chemically treated sandy substance — one of the most common natural resources on earth — because of what turned out to be silicon’s amazing hospitality in housing smaller and smaller electronic circuitry that could work at higher and higher speeds.
Intel achieved a major milestone by embedding its microprocessors in 80 percent of the computers manufactured globally, establishing itself as the most successful semiconductor company in history.
