Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley pioneer who co-founded Intel, dies at 94

[Zorro]

Source: Washington Post

His innovations in semiconductor chips helped launch Silicon Valley and transform the computer into the ubiquitous tool of modern life

Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon E. Moore, whose innovations in the design and manufacture of semiconductor chips helped launch Silicon Valley and transform the computer into the ubiquitous, defining tool of modern life, died March 24 at his home in Hawaii. He was 94.

Intel announced the death but did not provide further details.

A central figure in the history of electronics, Dr. Moore famously predicted in 1965 that computer power would double each year for a decade, a forecast he modified in the mid-1970s to every two years. His prophecy that computing capacity would grow exponentially — and with decreasing costs — was dubbed Moore’s Law and became the standard that scientists for decades raced successfully to meet.

Making computers smaller, faster and cheaper meant integrating ever more circuitry onto slivers of silicon. Dr. Moore envisioned that these integrated circuits would “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,” as he put it in the 1965 magazine article where he made his signature prediction.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/03/24/gordon-moore-intel-founder-dead/

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

https://archive.ph/o628s

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. This man truly defined the age of silicon.

Without him, no Apple or IBM PC.

[keopeli]

3. Remarkable mind. He saw the future through his craft. RIP!

[NJCher]

4. I have

A 386 Pentium chip he gave me. It is a pin. I am pretty sure where it is and I will try to photograph it tomorrow and post it.

[ancianita]

5. A real godfather of modern tech innovation. RIP

[William Seger]

6. Moore's Law

Moore was the first to observe that the number of transistors on integrated circuit chips doubles about every two years, and that rate should be expected to continue -- up to some unknown limit. "Moore's Law" is still somewhat accurate, but physical limits are in sight. Even if some of those can be overcome, around 2036 the law will bump into the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the transistors won't be reliable.

[tclambert]

7. Right. Exponential growth is unsustainable in the long run.

If you keep doubling, every ten doublings is a factor of 1,000. Every 40 doublings is a factor of a trillion. There are only so many atoms you can put on a computer chip.

[tclambert]

8. I met Gordon Moore once at a computer conference and shook his hand.

He was the keynote speaker. His big prediction in that speech was that people like me, systems programmers for mainframe computers, what the kids started calling "big iron" would see our jobs go away in the not too distant future. He was kind of right. I'm retired now. I think big mainframe computers still exist and somebody keeps them running. But mostly people use "little" computers. I call them little, because they don't weigh a ton anymore, though the desktop I'm working with right now has way more power and 1,000 times the storage capacity of the first mainframes I worked with.

Yes, yes, I'm old now, old enough to remember punch cards and paper tape. That was in the 1970s, after the moon landings. When i met Gordon Moore in the 1990s, the World Wide Web was a new thing. No Google, no Amazon, no Wikipedia. How did people survive in such a primitive world? (Oops. I double-checked and Amazon may have existed, but only sold books.)

[BumRushDaShow]

9. "I think big mainframe computers still exist and somebody keeps them running."

The NWS still uses them to run the weather models and have been in the process of upgrading the hardware and software over the past 5 years - https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/noaa-upgrades-flagship-us-global-weather-model

The American models (e.g., GFS and NAM) are usually run 4 times per day and the globals include ensemble runs (which are probably what are the most intensive).

My dad worked as a "computer programmer" (as the federal government PD titled them) writing COBOL programs for the Veteran's Administration (now Dept of Veteran's Affairs). He had been trained by "the Admiral" (as she was fondly and correctly called) Grace Hopper back in the '50s and worked there for 20 years before he passed in the mid-'70s. As kids, he would bring me and my sisters in to see the mainframe his team programmed for that took up a whole floor of the building. I believe that was one of the sites that issued Veterans' benefit checks at the time.

I remember the banks of mag tape units and of course, the loud card readers. He and his buddies had stacks of punch cards that had been punched specifically to generate certain tones out of the pins of the reader to "play" a song like "Jingle Bells", etc.

He used to bring write-protect tabs home that we would throw around like frisbees.