Celebrating 50 Years of Silicon Integrated Circuits

Where would we be today without the invention of the integrated circuit? Good question, and I’m not sure I’d like to know the answer! This year marks the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit (IC) that we know and love today, although the original IC the Fairchild Eight came up with wasn’t exactly the first. It was the first however to take off commercially, and the fundamentals from that finished product is still at the base of most electronics today.

Jack Kilby, of Texas Instruments, was the first to create a working IC back in 1958, which was based on germanium, not silicon. The further improvements of Fairchild Semiconductor’s silicon-based IC solved numerous problems over Kilby’s chip, and as as result, it was picked up in greater numbers. Kilby did however receive a Nobel Prize for his invention at the turn of the century.

At a recent event at the Computer History Museum, the IC was celebrated, and for good reason. What a 50 years it’s been! Both Gordon Moore and Jay Last, two of the Fairchild Eight, were present and gave speeches, and I particularly like this quote from Last, “It’s hard to believe that 50 years have passed. The reality of today is beyond our wildest imaginations of those days.” No kidding. Back then, you might have been put in a mental hospital if you accurately predicted what 2009 would be like!

The question now is “what’s next?” There are limitations to Moore’s Law, so current ICs may not be the long-term solution. But, as Moore states, “You get to the point where you can’t shrink things anymore. But that won’t stop innovation.” Well said.

He recounted the days when the eight of them, including Noyce and Hoerni, staged a mutiny at Shockley and struck out on their own, determined to find an existing company that wanted to use them to build out a semiconductor business. Moore said the men, most of whom were in their late 20s at the time, weren’t sure how to go about it, so they opened The Wall Street Journal, and circled the names of 30 companies they thought might be interested in their services. None bit.