Intel co-founder and philanthropist Gordon Moore dies at 94

Gordon Moore, the Intel Corporation co-founder who set the breakneck pace of progress in the digital age with a simple 1965 prediction of how quickly engineers would boost the capacity of computer chips, has died. He was 94.

Moore died on Friday at his home in Hawaii, according to Intel and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Moore, who held a PhD in chemistry and physics, made his famous observation – now known as “Moore’s Law” – three years before he helped start Intel in 1968. It appeared among a number of articles about the future written for the now-defunct Electronics magazine by experts in various fields.

The prediction, which Moore said he plotted out on graph paper based on what had been happening with chips at the time, said the capacity and complexity of integrated circuits would double every year.

Strictly speaking, Moore’s observation referred to the doubling of transistors on a semiconductor. But over the years, it has been applied to hard drives, computer monitors and other electronic devices, holding that roughly every 18 months a new generation of products makes their predecessors obsolete.