Gordon Moore
Gordon Earle Moore, or simply known as Gordon Moore, was
one of the American co-founders and Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation. He
was also the biographer of an article, Moore’s Law, where it was issued on 19th
April 1965 in the Electronics Magazine. His article had been an inspiration for
the semi-conductor industry for over 40 years. As well as being a successful
engineer, entrepreneur and manager, he is the membership in the ‘Traitorous
Eight’.
Early Life
During his early life, Moore was born on 3rd January 1929
in San Francisco, California. When he was a child, he has an attraction with
Chemistry and Mathematics. He was a pleasant student during his high school,
but his interest was more in playing sports than studying. When he got into his
senior year, he became more serious about his scholars.
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| Moore and Betty |
After graduating from Sequoia High School, Moore
registered studying at San Jose State University and bacame the first member of
his family to attend college. Two years later, he moved to the University of
California at Berkeley where he took a degree in Chemistry. He then went on to
get a doctorate in Physics and Chemistry at CalTech. In 1950, he married with
her wife, Betty and gave birth to his two sons, Kenneth in 1953 and Steven in
1959 respectively.
Early Career
Earlier, Moore was working for the co-inventor transistor
in 1947, William Shockley, in his company. Due to having issues with the
company of William Shockley, Moore and staff members of seven had left Shcokley
and built their own company together. They all were known as the ‘Traitorous
Eight’ or ‘the Fairchild Eight’. Together, each of them had invested $500 and
backing from Fairchild Camera and Instrument. In 1957, the Fairchild Semiconductor
Corporation was established.
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| Robert Noyce |
At Fairchild, Moore and his
fellow friends did a lot of inventing work, but by far the most important was
the creation of the integrated circuit (IC), a thin slice of silicon that had
been specially processed so that a tiny electric circuit was etched on its
surface. The circuit can have many millions of microscopic individual elements,
including transistors, resistors, and capacitors, all electrically connected in
a particular way to perform some useful function. The IC was created by one of
the Traitorous Eight members, Robert Noyce.
Moore’s Law
In 19th April 1965, he had issued an article in the
Electronic Magazines about “Moore’s Law” which stating that he predicted the
number of transistors of the industry would be able to place on a
computer microchip would double every year. In 1995, he updated
his prediction to once every two years. While originally intended as a rule in
1965, it has become the guiding principle for the industry to deliver more
effective semiconductor chips at balanced decreases in cost.
Beginning of Intel Corporation
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| From 1968 to 2005 logo |
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| 2005 onward logo |
Although the environment at
Fairchild was a major improvement over working for Shockley, Moore was unhappy
with the parent company’s management. He and Robert Noyce decided to branch out
on their own to make semiconductors. By 18th July 1968, in Mountain
View, California, Moore and Noyce had formed a new semiconductor company, which
they called Integrated Electronics or well-known as Intel. But originally, the
rights of the name ‘Intel’ had to be bought first from a company called ‘Intelco’.
In 1971, the company had created the very first microprocessor, the 4004. Intel also makes motherboards, chipsets, network interface controllers and integrated circuits, flash memory, graphic chips, embedded processors and other devices related to communications and
computing. Then 1972, Intel
introduced the first 8-bit microprocessor the 8008. Later in 1974, the Intel
8080 microprocessor was introduced with ten times the power of the 8008.
In 1976, Intel introduced the first micro-controllers,
the 8748 and 8048, a computer-on-a-chip optimized to control electronic
devices. Since then, Intel has been the industry leader in producing
ever-faster microprocessors. This is due to the use of Moore’s Law. The Intel
Corporation is currently headquarted in Santa Clara, California.
Achievements and Awards
Moore has been richly honored for his hard work and risk
taking and his current company became one of the largest manufacturers in the
semiconductor industry. In 1990, he had received the National Medal of
Technology from President George W. Bush and received the Marconi Society Lifetime
Achievement Award in 4th November 2005. Other awards he had received are the
Franklin Institute’s Bower Leadership Award, and the Presidential Medal of
Freedom. Other than that, he is an IEEE Fellow and a member of the National
Academy of Engineering.
Retirement
By the year of 1997, he retired as CEO from Intel
Corporation and made ‘the Moore Foundation’ together with her wife, Betty in
2000.
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