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Intel Corp co-founder Gordon Moore, a pioneer in the semiconductor industry whose Moore's Law predicted a steady rise in computing power for decades, has died aged 94.
- Gordon Moore died on Friday surrounded by family at his home in Hawaii
- His prediction that the number of transistors on microchips roughly doubled every year became known as Moore's Law
- Mr Moore is being remembered as "one of Silicon Valley's founding fathers"
Intel and Mr Moore's family philanthropic foundation said he died on Friday surrounded by family at his home in Hawaii.
Co-launching Intel in 1968, Mr Moore was the engineer within a trio of technology luminaries that eventually put Intel Inside processors in more than 80 per cent of the world's personal computers.
In an article he wrote in 1965, Mr Moore observed that thanks to improvements in technology, the number of transistors on microchips had roughly doubled every year since integrated circuits were invented a few years before.
His prediction that the trend would continue became known as Moore's Law and, later amended to every two years, helped push Intel and rival chipmakers to aggressively target their research and development resources to ensure that rule of thumb came true.
"Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers — or at least terminals connected to a central computer — automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment," Mr Moore wrote in his paper.
Mr Moore and his wife, Betty, started a foundation that focused on environmental causes and took on projects such as protecting the Amazon River basin and salmon streams in the United States, Canada and Russia.
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation president Harvey Fineberg said those who met and worked with Mr Moore would "forever be inspired by his wisdom, humility and generosity".
"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. Yet those historic achievements are only part of his legacy," Mr Fineberg said.
Mr Moore's work was published two decades before the PC revolution and more than 40 years before Apple launched the iPhone.
After his article, chips became more efficient and less expensive at an exponential rate, helping drive much of the world's technological progress for half a century and allowing the advent of not just personal computers, but the internet and Silicon Valley giants like Apple, Facebook and Google.
"It sure is nice to be at the right place at the right time," Mr Moore said in an interview around 2005.
"I was very fortunate to get into the semiconductor industry in its infancy.
"I had an opportunity to grow from the time where we couldn't make a single silicon transistor to the time where we put 1.7 billion of them on one chip!
"It's been a phenomenal ride."
Apple chief executive Tim Cook paid tribute to Mr Moore as "one of Silicon Valley's founding fathers and a true visionary who helped pave the way for the technological revolution".
"All of us who followed owe him a debt of gratitude. May he rest in peace," he said.
Morris Chang, the founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd, the world's largest contract chipmaker, said Mr Moore was a great and respected friend for more than six decades.
"With Gordon gone, almost all of my first-generation semiconductor colleagues are gone," he said.
Intel, under Mr Moore and fellow co-founder Robert Noyce, invented the microprocessors that would open the way to the personal computer revolution.
He was executive president until 1975, then from 1979 to 1987 Mr Moore was chairman and chief executive, and he remained chairman until 1997.
Mr Moore received a Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States, from former US president George W Bush in 2002. He and his wife had two children.
ABC/Reuters