Gordon Moore, co-founder and former CEO of Intel, and a pioneer in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, has passed away. A visionary whose insights helped shaped technology around the world, Gordon Moore, was the last of what has been called the “Intel Trinity” which comprised Intel’s other co-founder Robert Noyce and their first employee, Andy Grove.
Today, we lost a visionary.
— Intel (@intel) March 25, 2023
Gordon Moore, thank you for everything. pic.twitter.com/bAiBAtmd9K
To many around the world the term “Moore’s Law” is widely known. The term came to be after he published a paper in 1965 titled “The Future of Integrated Electronics“. At the time he was Director of the Research and Development Laboratories Semiconductor division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp which he would leave in 1968. The basis of Moore’s Law is a prediction that due to advances in miniaturization, transistor density could double every year, later he changed that to every two years. To this day semiconductor manufacturers have strived to maintain pace with Moore’s Law with some even claiming that it will cease to apply which has then created the counter expression “Moore’s Law is dead”.
Gordon Moore, who was also nicknamed the “quiet revolutionary”, and Robert Noyce would eventually form Intel from a company they previously created together called NM Electronics. Moore stepped down as Intel’s CEO in 2006 and he and his wife went on to establish the “Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation” to “create positive outcomes for future generations.“
“We thought we had an opportunity to make a significant impact on the world,” Gordon once reflected. “And really that is what was attractive. To do something permanent and hopefully on a large scale.”
-Gordon Moore
The foundation has published a detailed in-memoriam for Gordon on its website which can be found here.