Intel co-founder Gordon Moore dies at 94

Executives of top tech companies paid homage to the Silicon Valley titan

Gordon Moore served Intel in different positions, including as its president, vice president and chief executive. AFP/ Intel

Gordon Moore, a pioneer in the semiconductor industry and a co-founder of Intel, the world's largest chip maker by revenue, died on Friday at the age of 94.

Mr Moore died peacefully, surrounded by family at his home in Hawaii, the company said.

“Gordon Moore defined the technology industry through his insight and vision,” Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s chief executive, said. “He was instrumental in revealing the power of transistors, and inspired technologists and entrepreneurs across the decades.”

Mr Moore and his longtime colleague Robert Noyce founded Intel in July 1968. The Santa Clara, California-based company supplies about 80 per cent of the world’s personal computers with their most important part, the microprocessor.

Prior to establishing Intel, Mr Moore and Mr Noyce participated in the founding of Fairchild Semiconductor, where they played central roles in the first commercial production of diffused silicon transistors and later the world’s first commercially viable integrated circuits.

The two had previously worked together under William Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor and founder of Shockley Semiconductor, which was the first semiconductor company established in what would become Silicon Valley, according to the website.

Mr Moore and Mr Noyce later hired future Intel chief executive Andy Grove as the third employee, and the three of them built Intel into one of the world’s great companies. Together they became known as the “Intel Trinity.”

“Gordon’s vision lives on as our true north as we use the power of technology to improve the lives of every person on earth,” Mr Gelsinger said.

Mr Moore served the company in different positions including as its president, vice president and chairman, as well as its chief executive from 1979 to 1987. In 1997, he became chairman emeritus, stepping down in 2006.

He famously forecast in 1965 that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year – a prediction that came to be known as Moore’s Law.

“All I was trying to do was get that message across, that by putting more and more stuff on a chip we were going to make all electronics cheaper,” Mr Moore said in a 2008 interview.

Mr Moore was educated at San Jose State University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology, where he was awarded a PhD in chemistry in 1954.

In 1957, he co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor, a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, along with Mr Noyce and six other colleagues from Shockley Semiconductor. Eleven years later, they co-founded Intel.

Executives of top tech companies around the world paid tribute.

“The world lost a giant in Gordon Moore, who was one of Silicon Valley’s founding fathers and a true visionary who helped pave the way for the technological revolution,” Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook said in a tweet. “All of us who followed owe him a debt of gratitude.”

“His vision inspired so many of us to pursue technology, was an inspiration to me,” Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s chief executive said.