Also known as: Robert Noyce, Bob Noyce

Robert Noyce (1927–1990) was an American physicist who co-invented the practical silicon integrated circuit and co-founded Intel, becoming a central figure of Silicon Valley.¹

Noyce's line from Fairchild's planar integrated circuit to co-founding Intel: the manufacturable form of the chip, and the company that turned it into the microprocessor industry.

Life and work

At Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959, Noyce devised a way to build many interconnected components on one piece of silicon using a planar process, with the wiring laid down on the chip itself — the form of integrated circuit that proved manufacturable at scale. Jack Kilby had demonstrated the integrated circuit concept months earlier, and the two are credited as independent co-inventors.¹ In 1968 Noyce and Gordon Moore left Fairchild to found Intel.¹

Year	Milestone
1957	Co-founds Fairchild Semiconductor
1959	Devises the manufacturable planar silicon IC
1968	Co-founds Intel with Gordon Moore
1987	Helps launch the Sematech industry consortium

Why they matter

Noyce’s planar silicon chip is the ancestor of the modern microprocessor: monolithic, mass-produced, and cheap. Nearly every component in a radio scanner — from the tuner to the CPU running the decoder — descends from this manufacturing breakthrough. His leadership at Intel shaped the company that brought the microprocessor to the world.¹

Legacy

Known as “the Mayor of Silicon Valley,” Noyce mentored a generation of entrepreneurs and helped define the region’s culture before his death in 1990 — and the planar process he pioneered is still, in refined form, how the chips inside every SDR are made.

Sources

1. Robert Noyce — Wikipedia, for biography, the integrated circuit, and Intel. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

See also

• Integrated circuit
• Intel
• Gordon Moore
• Jack Kilby
• Semiconductor