Intel offers $10,000 for original Moore's Law text

SAN FRANCISCO: Moore's Law, the 40-year-old prediction that computer chip performance would double every year or two, may have found a place in history as an accurate forecast. Original copies of the declaration, however, are lost. And a hunt on eBay has begun.

Intel Corp. has posted a $10,000 reward for an original copy, in mint condition, of the April 19, 1965, issue of Electronics, the technical publication in which Intel's founder, Gordon Moore, made his famous forecast.

Electronics magazine is now defunct, and Intel, the world's largest chip maker, has no copy. Moore, now Intel's chairman emeritus, lent out his copy and lost track of it, said Howard High, an Intel spokesman.

So rather than make do with the photocopies that have long been circulated, Intel made a call to Silicon Valley neighbor eBay Inc., which helped it post a "wanted" item on the auctioneer's Web site.

"We're kind of hopeful that it will start a bit of a scavenger hunt for the engineering community of Silicon Valley, and hopefully somebody has it tucked away in a box in the corner of their garage," High said. "We think it's an important piece of history, and we'd love to have an original copy."

More a forecast than a mathematic truth, Moore's Law says that the number of components that can be packed on a silicon chip would rise at an exponential rate -- doubling every two years or so -- and it has held true even until today. Greater numbers of components equates to greater performance.

The Intel posting can be found on eBay's "want it now" Web site, http://pages.ebay.com/wantitnow/.