Intels 1968 Founding and Its Early Pmos Process Work

# Intel's 1968 Founding and Its Early PMOS Process Work

## 1. A New Entrant, Not Yet a Microprocessor Company

Intel was founded in 1968 by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, leaving Fairchild to start a company focused initially on semiconductor memory, not logic and not yet the microprocessor the company would become known for. Its earliest process work was PMOS, the same basic device polarity General Microelectronics and Electronic Arrays had already been shipping for several years, applied to a new target: dense memory arrays rather than calculator logic.

This context matters for one reason this series states plainly and does not expand on: Intel's own PMOS process discipline in 1968 and 1969 is the direct technical lineage leading toward both a landmark memory chip and, a few years later, a landmark logic chip, but both of those stories belong elsewhere and are named rather than retold here.

## 2. Building on an Already-Proven Commercial Case

Intel did not have to make the case that MOS density could be sold commercially; General Microelectronics and Electronic Arrays had already made that case with calculator chips years earlier. What Intel's founders judged was that the same density advantage, applied to memory instead of calculator logic, could unseat an even larger existing market: magnetic-core memory, which was reliable but expensive and physically bulky at the densities computers were starting to need.