Silicon Valley pioneer and philanthropist Gordon Moore has died aged 94 in Hawaii.
Mr Moore started working on semiconductors in the 1950s and co-founded the Intel Corporation.
He famously predicted that computer processing powers would double every year – later revised to every two – an insight known as Moore’s Law.
That “law” became the bedrock for the computer processor industry and influenced the PC revolution.
Two decades before the computer revolution began, Moore wrote in a paper that integrated circuits would lead “to such wonders as home computers – or at least terminals connected to a central computer – automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment”.
He observed, in the 1965 article, that thanks to technological improvements the number of transistors on microchips had roughly doubled every year since integrated circuits were invented a few years earlier.
His prediction that this would continue became known as Moore’s Law, and it helped push chipmakers to target their research to make this come true.
After Moore’s article was published, memory chips became more efficient and less expensive at an exponential rate.