Month: March 2023

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

Moore, who held a Ph.D. 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 several 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.

It became a standard for the tech industry’s progress and innovation.

“It’s the human spirit. It’s what made Silicon Valley,” Carver Mead, a retired California Institute of Technology computer scientist who coined the term “Moore’s Law” in the early 1970s, said in 2005. “It’s the real thing.”

‘Wisdom, humility and generosity’

Moore later became known for his philanthropy when he and his wife established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which focuses on environmental conservation, science, patient care and projects in the San Francisco Bay area. It has donated more than $5.1 billion to charitable causes since its founding in 2000.

“Those of us who have met and worked with Gordon will forever be inspired by his wisdom, humility and generosity,” foundation president Harvey Fineberg said in a statement.

Intel Chairman Frank Yeary called Moore a brilliant scientist and a leading American entrepreneur.

“It is impossible to imagine the world we live in today, with computing so essential to our lives, without the contributions of Gordon Moore,” he said.

In his book “Moore’s Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley’s Quiet Revolutionary,” author David Brock called him “the most important thinker and doer in the story of silicon electronics.”

Helped plant seed for renegade culture

Moore was born in San Francisco on Jan. 3, 1929, and grew up in the tiny nearby coastal town of Pescadero. As a boy, he took a liking to chemistry sets. He attended San Jose State University, then transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated with a degree in chemistry.

After getting his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1954, he worked briefly as a researcher at Johns Hopkins University.

His entry into microchips began when he went to work for William Shockley, who in 1956 shared the Nobel Prize for physics for his work inventing the transistor. Less than two years later, Moore and seven colleagues left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory after growing tired of its namesake’s management practices.

The defection by the “traitorous eight,” as the group came to be called, planted the seeds for Silicon Valley’s renegade culture, in which engineers who disagreed with their colleagues didn’t hesitate to become competitors.

The Shockley defectors in 1957 created Fairchild Semiconductor, which became one of the first companies to manufacture the integrated circuit, a refinement of the transistor.

Fairchild supplied the chips that went into the first computers that astronauts used aboard spacecraft.

Called Moore’s Law as ‘a lucky guess’

In 1968, Moore and Robert Noyce, one of the eight engineers who left Shockley, again struck out on their own. With $500,000 of their own money and the backing of venture capitalist Arthur Rock, they founded Intel, a name based on joining the words “integrated” and “electronics.”

Moore became Intel’s chief executive in 1975. His tenure as CEO ended in 1987, thought he remained chairman for another 10 years. He was chairman emeritus from 1997 to 2006.

He received the National Medal of Technology from President George H.W. Bush in 1990 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2002.

Despite his wealth and acclaim, Moore remained known for his modesty. In 2005, he referred to Moore’s Law as “a lucky guess that got a lot more publicity than it deserved.”

He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Betty, sons Kenneth and Steven, and four grandchildren.
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A U.S. ban of Chinese-owned TikTok, the country’s most popular social media for young people, seems increasingly inevitable a day after the grilling of its CEO by Washington lawmakers from across the political divide. 

But the Biden administration will have to move carefully in denying 150 million Americans their favorite platform over its links to China, especially after a previous effort by then-President Donald Trump was struck down by a U.S. court. 

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew endured a barrage of questions by U.S. lawmakers who made clear their belief that the app best known for sharing jokes and dance routines was a threat to U.S. national security as well as being a danger to mental health. 

In a tweet, TikTok executive Vanessa Pappas deplored a hearing “rooted in xenophobia.”   

With both Republicans and Democrats against him at Congress, Chew must now confront a White House ultimatum that TikTok either sever ties with ByteDance, its China-based owners, or be banned in America. 

Bipartisan legislation

A ban will depend on passage of legislation called the RESTRICT ACT, a bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate this month that gives the U.S. Commerce Department powers to ban foreign technology that threatens national security. 

When asked about Chew’s tumultuous hearing, spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre repeated the White House’s support of the legislation, which is one of several proposals by Congress to ban or squeeze TikTok. 

The sell-or-be-banned order tears up 2.5 years of negotiations between the White House and TikTok to find a way for the company to keep running under its current ownership while satisfying national security concerns. 

Those talks resulted in a proposal by TikTok called Project Texas in which the personal data of U.S. users stays in the United States and would be inaccessible to Chinese law or oversight. 

But the White House turned sour on the idea after officials from the FBI and the Justice Department said that the vulnerabilities to China would remain. 

“It’s hard for TikTok to prove a negative. ‘No, we’re not turning over any data to the Chinese government.’ Look at how skeptical our European partners are about U.S. companies where we have a strong legal system,” said Michael Daniel, executive director of the Cyber Threat Alliance, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to cybersecurity. 

Presently, the White House’s preferred solution is that TikTok sever ties with ByteDance either through a sale or a spinoff. 

“My understanding is that what has been … insisted on is the divestment of TikTok by the parent company,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday.

Impossible to achieve? 

But that option is riddled with difficulties, with many experts saying that TikTok cannot function without ByteDance, which develops the app’s industry-leading technology. 

“ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok and the golden jewel algorithm at the center of this security debate is a hot-button issue that will not necessarily be solved just by a spinoff or sale of the assets,” said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. 

Proving the point, China has ruled out giving the go-ahead for a TikTok sale, citing its own laws to protect sensitive technology from foreign buyers. 

That leaves a ban of TikTok that would undeniably benefit domestic rivals Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. 

One unknown is whether a death sentence for TikTok will cost Washington politically among voters. 

Through a ban, “a democracy will be taking steps that impede the ability of young Americans to express themselves and earn a livelihood,” said Sarah Kreps, professor of government at Cornell University. 

Does the lawmakers’ grilling of the TikTok CEO minimize the danger of political blowback? 

“I want to say this to all the teenagers … who think we’re just old and out of touch,” said Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican. “You may not care that your data is being accessed now, but there will be one day when you do care about it.”
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