Gordon Moore, Intel co-founder and creator of Moore’s Law, has died

Gordon Moore, one of Intel’s co-founders and titan of Silicon Valley, died today at age 94, according to a company press release. He was among the “treacherous eight” who founded Fairchild Semiconductor, which became an incubator for many other Silicon Valley companies, including AMD. Moore and Robert Noyce, another member of the eight, went on to found Intel, originally named Integrated Electronics, in 1968. He eventually became chairman and CEO of the company in 1979 and served as CEO for eight years.

While Moore obviously played an important role in developing the technology that powers modern computing devices, many people will also know his name because of “Moore’s Law”, his 1965 prediction that processors would roughly double nearly the number of transistors each year. (A decade later, he changed his estimate to double every two years.) While that may no longer be the case, the idea held true for a surprisingly long time.

In 2015, when asked about Moore’s Law, he responded by saying “once I made a successful prediction, I avoided making another,” according to a statement from the foundation. Gordon and Betty Moore.

According to Intel, Moore’s recent activities were philanthropic, as he worked with his wife on issues involving “environmental conservation, scientific research, higher education, and the San Francisco Bay Area,” according to a report. statement of the founders on the page of its foundation.