Gordon Moore, one of the co-founders of Intel and a Silicon Valley titan, passed away today at the age of 94. a company press release. He was part of the “treacherous eightwhich founded Fairchild Semiconductor, which became a breeding ground for many other Silicon Valley companies, including AMD. Moore and Robert Noyce, a fellow member of the eight, went on to found Intel, originally called Integrated Electronics, in 1968. He eventually became chairman and CEO of the company in 1979, and served as CEO for eight years.
While Moore clearly played a major role in developing the technology that powers modern computing devices, many people will also know his name because of “Moore’s Law,” his 1965 prediction that the number of processors would roughly double each year. (A decade later, he changed his estimate to one doubling every two years.) While that may no longer be the case, the idea persisted for a surprisingly long time.
When asked about Moore’s Law in 2015, he responded by saying, “Once I made a successful prediction, I avoided making another one,” said a statement from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
According to Intel, Moore’s recent pursuits have been philanthropic, as he worked with his wife on issues related to “environmental conservation, scientific research, higher education, and the San Francisco Bay Area,” according to Intel. a founder statement on his foundation’s page.
