Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, a legendary technologist who foresaw the transformative possibilities of semiconductor technology and helped chart the industry’s revolutionary path, died Friday at age 94. Intel said Moore died at his home in Hawaii.
Before helping launch Intel with colleague Robert Noyce in 1968, Moore had prophesized exponential growth in semiconductor technology. In a seminal 1965 paper, Moore predicted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double annually as technology advanced – a maxim that became Moore’s Law, one of the computer chip industry’s guidance principles.
“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,” Moore said in 2008.
Originally from San Francisco, Moore studied at San Jose State University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology before launching his career in semiconductors. He served as Intel’s CEO from 1979 until 1987 and remained the Silicon Valley company’s chairman for another 10 years.
“I will remember Gordon as a brilliant scientist, a straight-talker and an astute businessperson who sought to make the world better and always do the right thing,” former Intel chairman Andy Bryant, long the company’s most senior Oregon executive, said in a statement Friday. “It was a privilege to know him, and I am grateful that his legacy lives on in the culture of the company he helped to create.”
As an Intel executive in the 1970s, Moore was responsible for the decision to expand into Oregon, which eventually became Intel’s largest site. Intel had been scouting sites in Seattle, Phoenix and Reno, among other locations, seeking an outpost within a 90-minute flight of the Bay Area.
A member of Tektronix’s board called Moore, former Intel Vice President Keith Thompson told The Oregonian in 2007, and suggested Moore consider Oregon.
“I flew up to Portland and we found a Realtor,” Thompson said.
Today, chipmakers want 1,000 acres for their new factories. Back then, though, factories were much smaller, and Intel only wanted 30 acres. Thompson found shovel-ready sites in Wilsonville and in Aloha, Moore told Thompson to choose one, and in 1974 he selected the Aloha property.
Intel continues to operate at that site and at others in Washington County, where the company employs 22,000. The chipmaker is Oregon’s largest corporate employer.
“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 across the decades,” current CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a statement Friday.
Last April, Intel renamed its main Oregon research campus “Gordon Moore Park at Ronler Acres.” It’s the home of the chipmaker’s most advanced research and where the company crafts each new generation of its technology.
“My career and much of my life took shape within the possibilities fueled by Gordon’s leadership at the helm of Intel,” Gelsinger said, “and I am humbled by the honor and responsibility to carry his legacy forward.”
Moore’s survivors include his wife Betty, whom he married in 1950, sons Kenneth and Steven, and four grandchildren. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation says it has donated more than $5.1 billion to philanthropy efforts since the Moores founded it in 2023.
“Though he never aspired to be a household name, Gordon’s vision and his life’s work enabled the phenomenal innovation and technological developments that shape our everyday lives,” foundation President Harvey Fineberg said in a statement Friday.
— Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | 503-294-7699
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