Intel co-founder and Silicon Valley Pioneer Gordon Moore dies at 94

Hyderabad: The co-founder and former chairman of Intel Corporation Gordon E Moore died at his home in Hawaii on Saturday. He was 94. Intel and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation confirmed his death.

Moore started working on semiconductors in the 1950s and co-founded the Intel Corporation. He predicted that computer processing powers would double every year and then revised the number to every two years. This insight is known as Moore’s Law.

His foresight regarding the exponential growth of computer chip technology set the stage for the high-tech era.

After earning his PhD, Moore joined the Fairchild Semiconductor laboratory that manufactured commercially viable transistors and integrated circuits. Expansion of that company was the foundation for the transformation of the peninsula south of San Francisco, which is now known as Silicon Valley.

In 1968, Moore and Robert Noyce left Fairchild to start Intel.

Moore's work helped drive significant technological progress around the world and allowed for the advent of personal computers and Apple, Facebook and Google.

Moore always called himself an ‘accidental entrepreneur’ as he always wanted to be a teacher but could not become one. He invested $500 in the budding microchip industry Intel, which helped electronics become one of the largest industries in the world and he became a billionaire.

In addition, Gordon Moore is credited with making laptop computers accessible to hundreds of millions of people and with putting microprocessors inside of everything from toaster ovens, bathroom scales, and toy fire trucks to telephones, automobiles, and aircraft, New York Times reported.

The Intel Corporation paid tribute to its co-founder, in a tweet: “we lost a visionary".

Intel's current CEO Pat Gelsinger said Moore had defined the technology industry through his insight and vision, and inspired technologists and entrepreneurs across the decades. "He leaves behind a legacy that changed the lives of every person on the planet. His memory will live on. "I am humbled to have known him," Mr Gelsinger tweeted.

Moore, along with his wife Betty Moore contributed immensely to philanthropy. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation founded in 2001 focussed on environmental causes. The Foundation was involved in protecting the Amazon River basin and salmon streams in the US, Canada and Russia.

The duo donated 175 million Intel shares in the process. They made the greatest single gift to a university at the time in 2001, giving $600 million to the California Institute of Technology.