Gordon Moore, cofounder of tech titan Intel, has died at the age of 94

Moore died peacefully surrounded by family at his home in Hawaii on Friday, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation said in a statement.

A founder of the industry pioneer Fairchild Semiconductor, Moore in 1968 co-founded Intel, which grew into the world’s largest semiconductor maker at one point. The Santa Clara, California-based company supplies about 80% of the world’s personal computers with their most important component, the microprocessor. Moore was the chief executive officer from 1975 to 1987.

Intel and other semiconductor makers are still developing products according to a version of the Moore’s Law, the scientist’s observation in 1965 that the number of transistors in a computer chip — which determines the speed, memory and capabilities of an electronic device — doubles every year. The law, revised by Moore in 1975, remains the basis of development within and beyond the chip industry, although its continued use is a subject of debate.

Moore’s observation was crucial to Intel’s rise to prominence. The company poured increasing amounts into improving the production of small electronic components at a pace that its rivals could not keep up with. Rapid growth made Intel’s hardware technology the heart of the personal computer revolution, then the internet revolution, until the company’s Asian rivals challenged its leadership.

Alive and Well

“Intel will be the custodian of Moore’s Law for decades to come,” said Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger in an interview in January 2022. He said the law “is alive and we will pursue it very closely.”

Carver Mead, an engineering professor at the California Institute of Technology, coined the name Moore’s Law. Moore himself expressed surprise at its influence and longevity and preferred to demystify and downplay it.

“I wanted to get across, here’s an idea where technology is rapidly developing and it’s going to have a big impact on the cost of electronics,” Moore recalled for a video produced by the Chemical Heritage Foundation. “That’s the main point I’m trying to get across, that this is the path to low-cost electronics.”

Moore was the director of research and development at Fairchild when he made his famous projection of a article, “Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits,” for the April 19, 1965, edition of Electronics magazine. Noting that the cheapest circuit at the time contained 50 transistors, he predicted that the number would double every year to 65,000. Modern microprocessors contain billions of transistors.

In the same article he wrote: “Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers, or at least terminals connected to a central computer, automatic vehicle controls and personal portable communication equipment. “

1975 Revision

Revising his law in 1975, Moore said components per chip would grow half as fast, doubling every two years rather than every year. An Intel colleague, David House, made the oft-quoted corollary that the performance of a chip, due to the number and quality of transistors, doubles every 18 months.

Intel’s 2006 proxy statement shows Moore owns 173 million shares. That was the last time his name appeared in the company’s regulatory filings. His net worth is about $7.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

In 2000, Moore founded Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which reported assets of $9.5 billion in 2021, making it one of the largest 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 stems from his love of fishing.

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’s most powerful optical telescope; and $100 million to the University of California at Davis to build a nursing school.

Sheriff’s son

Gordon Earle Moore was born on Jan. 3, 1929, in San Francisco and grew up 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 store.

Moore saw a chemistry set in a neighbor’s house and decided he wanted to be a chemist. He began experimenting with making rockets and explosives and studied chemistry at San Jose State University. There, he met his wife, the former Betty Whittaker. They have two children, Kenneth and Steven.

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 Ph.D. in physics and chemistry from Caltech.

He got a job as a researcher at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Silver Spring, Maryland. William Shockleywho developed 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.

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 called them the “Traitorous Eight.” Noyce, in the late 1950s, helped invent the integrated circuit, the basis of all chip design to this day. He died in 1990.

Intel forms

Noyce and Moore formed Intel, a contraction of “integrated electronics,” in a former Union Carbide factory in Mountain View, the heart of what they would help build in Silicon Valley. Moore’s first title was executive vice president. Andy Grove, another Fairchild employee, soon joined them.

In 1971, Intel introduced the first microprocessor, with over 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 chose Intel’s 8088 microprocessor to run it first personal computer.

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’s board in 2001 at age 72, in accordance with the mandatory retirement-age policy he had championed.

Moore “doesn’t brag, though his record of success gives plenty to brag about,” wrote Richard Tedlow in his 2006 biography of Grove. “He looks like, well, a regular guy.” Tedlow quotes Grove as calling Moore “a wise man without air.”

Today, most chip industry leaders and observers would argue that Moore’s Law no longer holds. Some of the layers of materials used to make semiconductors are only one atom thick, meaning they cannot be added any further. In such small geometries the properties of materials that make them semiconductors are destroyed. That would destroy their usefulness as the microscopic switches used to represent the most basic form of electronic information.

Unlike subsequent Intel leaders who rejected predictions of the demise of Moore’s Law, Moore predicted its irrelevance.

“Someday this will have to stop,” Moore said at an event in 2015 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his legislation. “No exponential thing like this goes on forever.”

Moore is survived by Betty Irene Whitaker, whom he married in 1950, as well as sons Kenneth and Steven and four grandchildren.