Intel Co-Founder Gordon Moore Receives IEEE Medal of Honor

On September 20 Gordon Moore was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor, the Institute’s highest award, in a ceremony in Quebec City, Canada. He is being recognized for his contributions to the advancement of semiconductor technology, both as an engineer and entrepreneur. I can think of no more deserving individual in our industry. Gordon was one of Intel’s co-founders and served over periods of time as CEO and chairman of the board. This is the entrepreneur and manager side of Gordon, and Intel wouldn’t have survived its turbulent early years and risen to the top of the semiconductor industry without his leadership. But Gordon was always a process engineer at heart, always interested in the latest technological advances that propelled Intel to the leading edge first of memory technology, then of microprocessor technology. When I was elected to the position of Intel Fellow it was Gordon who introduced me at the awards ceremony, an honor that I will never forget.

Gordon is famous for describing “Moore’s Law” which set our industry’s direction for scaling transistor dimensions and increasing transistor count at a regular pace to provide continued improvements in integrated circuit functionality, performance and cost. Its hard to remember that back in 1965, when he first published his paper describing the benefits of following this path, integrated circuits had less than a hundred transistors. Four decades later we are over 1 billion transistors. Intel has been doubling transistor count on our microprocessors every two years just like clockwork for more than 35 years. I would call Gordon extremely prescient. In his modest way he would probably admit that he’s surprised that Moore’s Law has extended as far as it has. I know that we have more surprises coming for him.

Mark Bohr, Intel Senior Fellow, Logic Technology Development