Moore projects the doubling of chip components
A Fairchild executive sketches five data points and outlines fifty years of the chip industry
Quick facts
- Author
- Gordon Moore, Fairchild Semiconductor
- Published
- 19 April 1965, Electronics magazine
- Original projection
- 65,000 components per chip by 1975
- Term coined by
- Carver Mead, Caltech
What happened
Gordon Moore, director of R&D at Fairchild Semiconductor, drew a line through five data points tracking how many components fit on an integrated circuit at the lowest cost per component, from 1959 through 1964. His paper 'Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits' was published in Electronics magazine on 19 April 1965. Extrapolating the trend forward, he projected that by 1975 a single chip would hold 65,000 components, implying the number was roughly doubling every year. A decade later, with the industry's actual progress in hand, Moore revised his own forecast to a doubling every two years.
Why it matters
The observation, later dubbed 'Moore's Law' by Caltech professor Carver Mead, became a self-fulfilling target that chipmakers organized their research roadmaps around for decades, driving the ever-cheaper, ever-denser processors behind every device from mainframes to smartphones.
How we know
The Computer History Museum's Silicon Engine project documents the original 1965 paper, the 65,000-component 1975 projection, and Moore's later revision to a two-year doubling directly from the historical record.
Sources
- Computer History Museum (The Silicon Engine). 1965: "Moore's Law" Predicts the Future of Integrated Circuits · Reputable sourcecomputerhistory.org · The domain "computerhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Gordon E. Moore, Electronics magazine (1965), hosted by University of Texas at Austin. Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits · Primary source (author-declared)cs.utexas.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).
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