Gordon Moore on explosives, and semiconductors

Max Hauser · 2005-09-30T05:08:18+00:00

Fascinating talk tonight by Gordon Moore of Intel, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Carver Mead acting as interviewer. (For those who don't know them, Moore was a co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and later Intel, and a seminal figure in that industry; Carver Mead a professor in related specialties, in contact with Moore since 1959.) Audience included Intel alumni and journalists. Occasion was 40th anniversary of "Moore's law" which predicted in 1965 the doubling of semiconductor density periodically, "for at least the next 10 years" (it continues today).Moore spent some of his time on explosives, and their popularity as a motivator for technical careers, a popularity that proves to be surprisingly wide. That will presumably be the main interest in this note, but first a little more about semiconductors. (First the broccoli, then dessert!)Moore's original 1965 article in _Electronics_ (I picked up a copy) projected integrated circuits (ICs) becoming commonplace in products like car control systems, home computers, portable telephones. "The electronic wristwatch needs only a display to be feasible today." He included projections such as the curve that became Moore's Law (Carver Mead, I understand, coined that name later), based at the time only on 1959-1965 density data. He explained to us that the whole motivation of the article was to "sell" the idea of ICs to the electronics industry which regarded them, at the time, as expensive and exotic, of interest only for high-priced apps in military or aerospace. Moore provided data suggesting otherwise, that ICs would become mainstream technology, which is obvious now, after-the-fact. Later he mentioned some of the magnitudes of integrated component manufacture now; 10 to the 18th power of transistors produced annually, comparable to the number of letters in printed documents -- and a transistor on an IC is now cheaper, on average, than a readable text character printed on paper.Moore was a...

Sep 30, 2005 42 Replies

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Rich, Under the Affluence 20 years ago

Apparently, my nose and feet are still growing, even at the tender age of 56 1/2. And that thing they say, how you can tell from the size of a guy's nose and/or feet, how big his "other parts" are, it's not true.

Sigh. Rich

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