Nowadays we are accustomed to semiconductor start-up chip companies delivering pretty incremental advantages in price/performance, but it wasn’t always like that, as the chip industry’s greatest name, Gordon Moore, recalls when recounting the story of the founding of Intel in 1968.
"The timing was quite good”, recalls Moore, “the idea of semiconductor memory was around, and we reckoned we needed to make a 200 to 1 cost reduction to be in competition with core memories."
The company was extremely quick to set up its first factory and had a product out in 1969 - a bipolar RAM. "It didn't use to cost so much in those days”, remembers Moore, “we developed two technologies (Schottky bipolar and silicon gate MOS) and put our first three products into production for $3m.”
“We made the right bet on both technologies”, says Moore, “bipolar was too easy - the others could copy it - but silicon gate MOS had the right degree of difficulty. It was seven years before we had competition - that gave us a chance to expand in a vacuum. The opportunity we had to get established was the result of the fortunate choice of silicon gate MOS technology."
"Intel was a tremendous opportunity for us to have it all go round a second time”, says Moore, “it wasn't all such a surprise to us as it had been when we started Fairchild. This time things happened much as we expected them to happen. We didn't have the problem of how to get management experience of big companies because Fairchild (which Moore co-founded in 1957) had become a $150 million company with 20,000 employees, so we had the experience."
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