On the morning of the inevitable vote that would see him sever official ties with Intel Corp., Gordon Moore took time out to chat about his past, his present and what he thinks the future will bring with EE Times. Here is a snapshot of that conversation:
EE Times: What path do you see technology taking over the coming years?
Gordon Moore: My visibility has usually been limited to the next couple of generations of technology. That's six years or so; you can see what's going to happen technically. Even then it's hard to see where the big impacts are going to come from. I calibrate myself by saying [that] if you'd asked me in 1980 what the big impact of microprocessors would be, I probably would have missed the PC. If you asked me in 1990 what was important, I probably would have missed the Internet.
EET: How has engineering changed over the years?
Moore: Oh boy! Certainly, in this business, from the time I got into it until now, it's become a heck of a lot more professional. When I got into the semi business, there were no engineers trained in semiconductors. It was physicists and chemists, and then you needed an electrical engineer that understood some of the measurements so you knew what you were making.
As the industry has developed, you have huge engineering schools now that teach people everything we've learned in the meantime. Now you really have a much stronger body of knowledge. But there's always some leading-edge understanding we need if we're going to keep making progress, so we keep hiring a few scientists, but a heck of a lot of engineers too.
EET: What are EEs not learning in school?
Moore: They can't learn everything in school, but one area I think gets neglected is linear circuitry. That seems to be more of an art form than an engineering science. As we move to higher and higher frequencies, everything becomes an analog circuit and relatively few people can design those. But I think, in general, the schools are doing a terrific job. The kids come out very well prepared. You add to their good background the specifics of the kind of problems they have to deal with, and they pick it up pretty fast.
EET: What advice would you give to someone just starting?
Moore: They ought to hook up with some of the established companies in the industry, really learn how the company works and how engineering works on the scale that goes on in industry.
One big difference that students see is that engineering projects are collaborative efforts, and fairly large ones. You'd have several hundred engineers working on a microprocessor. They don't get to do much of that in school. They may have small group projects, but even that's a relatively new trend in engineering school. But learning to work cooperatively in a team is something that's certainly valuable.
EET: What are you most proud of?
Moore: The building of Intel has to be the key event in my life. From nothing, you build what was at one time last year the world's second most valuable company. It's fallen down a bit since then I guess.
EET: Looking forward, what's the next step in technology?
Moore: More of the same as we look at computing and communications. There will still be dramatic improvements in what we can do in terms of computing power. There's certainly major applications that require it. And I think we'll find it's just going to simplify a lot of things. Some of these applications, like calculating the folding of proteins — which is a big medical problem — consume almost infinite amounts of computing capacity. So there are some problems that we'll be able to address as a result of this increase.
But there are other things coming along that I find attractive, such as really good speech recognition. By that I mean the computer will understand from the context whether you mean "to," "too" or "two," as well as foreign languages. Once a computer can do that, then it'll change the way people use computers and how they interact with them.
I don't know how long it will take to get there, maybe another 20 years or so.
EET: What core technologies excite you?
Moore: In electronics, it seems a bit like more of the same. The area that I think will be really exciting will be some of this biotech stuff. What we're learning to do in biology has phenomenal opportunities for good and bad, and it'll be fun to watch.
EET: Do you have unaccomplished goals?
Moore: I ran out of unaccomplished goals.
