Gordon Moore’s Lasting Legacy

Gordon Moore, the technology industry’s oldest statesman, dead today at the age of 94.

He was one of the nation’s greatest citizens as a pioneer of the semiconductor industry and chairman emeritus of Intel, which he co-founded in 1968. He was known for formulating Moore’s law in 1965. He predicted that the number of components on a chip would double each time. a few years or so.

That prediction has held up remarkably well for some 58 years. In 1965, chipmakers could fit about 64 transistors on a chip. In 1971, Intel was able to put 2,300 transistors on its first microprocessor, the Intel 4004. Nvidia can now put 80 billion transistors on a graphics processing unit (GPU), and Cerebras can put 2.6 trillion transistors on a pizza-sized silicon wafer.

That is the power of exponential growth. And it was why Silicon Valley became a global technology center and why America led the technology industry. It’s a sad commentary that Moore died the same month Silicon Valley Bank went bankrupt.

Moore died at his home in Hawaii surrounded by his family, Intel said in a statement.

Moore and longtime colleague Robert Noyce founded Intel in July 1968 (Andy Grove was considered an employee, but he was also often honored as a co-founder). Moore initially served as executive vice president until 1975 when he became president. In 1979, Moore was named chairman of the board and chief executive officer, positions he held until 1987, when he relinquished the position of CEO and continued as chairman. Moore became chairman emeritus in 1997, resigning in 2006.

I had the pleasure of meeting Moore back in the day, when he regularly came out to be a beacon to younger leaders of Silicon Valley, which was a grove of orchards when he arrived in the Bay Area. Like Intel co-founders Robert Noyce and Andy Grove, Moore went on to become one of Silicon Valley’s leading thought leaders.

He remarked at one point that the number of transistors built by the chip industry had almost surpassed the number of ants in the world. Such calculations were an inspiration to engineers all over the world. And they communicated the magnitude of the electronic revolution.

He was nice too. I last saw him in person in 2015 at an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law. He appeared on stage with New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman. They talked about semiconductors, which Moore pioneered at Shockley Laboratories, Fairchild Semiconductor, and finally Intel. At that event, Moore was a little slow to take the stage, but he was still as sharp as you’d expect from the Intel co-founder. He had a melodious voice and a folksy style.

Speaking at the Exploratorium, a monument to science, Moore said: “I started to see in our lab that we were going to get more electronics on a chip, and this was an opportunity to get that message across. I had no idea that it would be as accurate as prediction.”

The original prediction was that the number of transistors would double every year. By 1975, progress had slowed a bit, so Moore revised the forecast to double every two years. Still, that was just a minor miscalculation.

More than anyone else, Moore defined and codified the pace of modern life. Moore’s Law worked like a metronome for Silicon Valley. If you persevered, you were successful. If you didn’t, the competition would blow past you, according to Silicon Valley author Michael Moore.

Moore made his famous prediction in the April 19 issue of Electronics magazine in 1965. Friedman noted that Moore predicted just about every major tech gadget except microwave popcorn.

At the time of the 2015 event, the Intel Core i5 processor had 3,500 times the processing power of the first Intel microprocessor, the 4004. It has 90,000 times more energy efficiency and 60,000 times lower costs. If cars made the same progress, you could go 300,000 miles per hour and your car would cost 4 cents, then Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said.

While Intel still invests huge sums in R&D, it has been surpassed in many ways by longtime rival Advanced Micro Devices and the two companies are more competitive than ever.

And for decades, Intel ruled the microprocessor industry it invented when Moore was at Intel.

When asked what the biggest lesson of Moore’s Law is, Moore said, “Once I made a successful prediction, I avoided making another one.” The crowd laughed.

Ten years of extrapolating was pretty wild for Moore, who specialized in self-deprecation.

“The fact that it’s been going on for 50 years has been amazing,” he said.

He said Moore’s Law won’t last forever. But he said it would work for five or ten years if you use good technique. He said he hoped the industry would not come to a dead end. Many predicted decades ago that the industry would grind to a halt.

But while many experts now question whether we can stay on the path of Moore’s law, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said Moore’s law was alive and well. That same week, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Moore’s law was dead. I commented that this was not good timing as the tech industry was about to enter the race to produce the metaverse.

In 2015, Friedman noted that 47% of jobs could be wiped out by automated technology such as artificial intelligence. Moore said, “Don’t blame me for that.”

Moore was modest. Moore said he couldn’t utter the term “Moore’s law” for the first two decades because it was so embarrassing. After that, he could finally say it with a straight face, he said.

When asked if Moore’s Law or Murphy’s Law were more popular on Google, Moore replied, “Oh, Moore’s Law beats it by a mile.”

In 2022, Intel announced that its researchers envisioned a way to make chips 10 times denser through packaging improvements and a layer of a material just three atoms thick. And that could pave the way to putting a trillion transistors on a chip package by 2030.

Speaking at the 2015 event, Moore said, “I can’t see anything else that’s been going on for so long with exponential growth.”

Moore said he became interested in chemistry when he was young by playing with explosives he made with his chemistry set. He was playing with nitroglycerin and was on his way to making dynamite.

“Real?” said Friedman in surprise.

Moore said he’s excited about the frontiers of technology, such as robotics, that his grandchildren are working on.

“Our position in the world in basic science has deteriorated quite a bit,” he said. “Other countries spend more on basic research than we do, and ours is getting a lot less basic.”

“He was a giant in the world of semiconductors and computing and leaves an amazing legacy,” said former Creative Strategies analyst Tim Bajarin.

In 2015, Harvey Fineberg, president of The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, said that in 1965 the US invested 10% of its budget in research and development, and now that figure has dropped to less than 4%. Fortunately, in 2022, Congress passed the Chip and Science Act and President Joseph Biden signed it into law. It is setting aside tens of billions of dollars for investment in U.S. chip factories in an effort to bring them back from abroad.

During his lifetime, Moore devoted his focus and energy to philanthropy, especially environmental preservation, science, and improvements in patient care. He and his wife of 72 years founded the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which has donated more than $5.1 billion to charitable causes since its inception in 2000.

“Those of us who have met and worked with Gordon will forever be inspired by his wisdom, humility and generosity,” Fineberg said in a statement today. “While never aspiring to become a household name, Gordon’s vision and life’s work have enabled the phenomenal innovation and technological advancements that define our everyday lives. Yet those historic achievements are only part of his legacy. His and Betty’s generosity as philanthropists will shape the world for generations to come.”

Intel continues to introduce new concepts to physics with breakthroughs in providing better qubits for quantum computing. Intel researchers are working on better ways to store quantum information by gaining a better understanding of various interface defects that can act as environmental perturbations affecting quantum data.

Intel CEO Gelsinger said in a statement: “Gordon Moore defined the technology industry through his insight and vision. He was instrumental in revealing the power of transistors and inspired technologists and entrepreneurs throughout the decades. We at Intel continue to be inspired by Moore’s Law and intend to pursue it until the periodic table is exhausted. Gordon’s vision lives on as our true north as we harness the power of technology to improve the lives of every person on Earth. My career and much of my life were shaped within the opportunities fueled by Gordon’s leadership at the helm of Intel, and I am humbled by the honor and responsibility of carrying on his legacy.”

When asked what he wished he had predicted, he said, “I wish I had seen the applications sooner. The development of the Internet came as a surprise to me. Little did I know it would open up a new world of opportunities.”

He added: “We’ve only just begun to see what computers are going to do for us. The evolution of machine intelligence. It happens in ascending steps. I never thought I would see an autonomous vehicle driving on our highways.”