Gordon Moore and Moore’s Law

Gordon Moore (January 3, 1929 – March 24, 2023) was a cofounder of chipmaker Intel Corporation. He proposed Moore’s law which makes the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit, or computer chip, doubles about every two years. Moore’s Law was first published April 19, 1965.

Early life and education

Gordon Moore’s interest in chemistry began in 1940 when he received a chemistry set as a Christmas gift. This inspired him to become a chemist. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1950 with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry.

Fairchild Semiconductor Laboratory

After receiving a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1954, Moore went to work at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division of Beckman Instruments. But he left with the “traitorous eight,” when Sherman Fairchild agreed to back them and created the influential Fairchild Semiconductor corporation. This was where Moore was working when he proposed the first iteration of Moore’s Law.

In 1965, Moore was working as the director of research and development (R&D) at Fairchild Semiconductor. Electronics Magazine asked him to predict what he thought might happen in the semiconductor components industry over the next ten years. In an article published April 19, 1965, Moore observed that the number of components in a dense computer chip had doubled approximately every year. He speculated that it would continue to do so for at least the next ten years. Ten years later, in 1975, he revised the forecast rate to approximately every two years. This later became known as the phrase “Moore’s law”. The prediction has become a target for miniaturization in the semiconductor industry and has had widespread impact in many areas of technological change.

Moore did not expect Moore’s law to hold forever. The industry reaction to the Intel 486 CPU in 1989 is interesting. Analysts warned not to expect the next chip after the 486 to be as much of a leap ahead, because they believed we were running up against the limit of Moore’s law.

Intel Corporation

In July 1968, Robert Noyce and Moore left Fairchild and founded NM Electronics. This later became Intel Corporation. Moore served as executive vice president until 1975 when he became president. In April 1979, Moore became chairman and chief executive officer, holding that position until April 1987, when he became chairman. He was named chairman emeritus in 1997. Under Noyce, Moore, and later Andrew Grove, Intel pioneered new technologies for computer memory, integrated circuits, and microprocessor design.

In 2000, Moore and his wife established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, with a gift worth about $5 billion. Through the foundation, they initially targeted environmental conservation, science, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Moore died at his home in Hawaii on March 24, 2023, at age 94. Then-Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger remembered him as someone who “defined the technology industry through his insight and vision.”

Are we at the end of Moore’s Law?

The consensus seems to be that it’s time for us to consider what life will look like when Moore’s Law ends. One problem is that we don’t know how to make a wire any less than one atom wide. A more complex component like a transistor, diode, or capacitor will always be multiple atoms wide and deep.

We aren’t at the point where that single atom limit is our limiting factor just yet, but we are at the point where advancements in size reduction that once took two years are taking closer to five.

Another difference between today and decades past is that it is getting increasingly difficult for a company to be good at both designing computer chips and manufacturing them. There used to be an inherent advantage at being good at both. When designing the chip, chip designers would consider the strengths and weaknesses of their manufacturing facility. One of the reasons the DEC Alpha CPU was so good was because it pushed the absolute limits of Digital Equipment Corporation‘s manufacturing facility.

Contrast that to how AMD designs CPUs today. AMD no longer has its own manufacturing facilities. Instead, they design the very best CPU that they can, then they let somebody else figure out what they have to do to manufacture it. AMD specializes in designing great chips, while TSMC specializes in making great chips, regardless of who designed it.

And if AI is hitting a wall–which I believe it is, for whatever that’s worth–the slowdown in Moore’s law is one of the reasons why. In an ideal world for AI, the next big advancement in computing power and efficiency would come every 1-2 years. Once shareholders realize those advancements take five years, we’re going to have a problem. Shareholders are not known for their patience.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.