Intel Museum – Santa Clara, California - Atlas Obscura

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Intel Museum

The headquarters of the semiconductor giant has a 10,000-square-foot museum. 

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At the headquarters of semiconductor giant Intel, in Santa Clara, California, a 10,000-square-foot museum proudly displays artifacts and exhibits on company accomplishments. Before the museum opened its doors to the public in 1992, Intel spent years accumulating a collection of their most groundbreaking products, from the Intel 4004 microprocessor to early IBM computers that ran on Intel chips.

Intel was founded in 1968 by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, two engineers who worked together at Fairchild Semiconductors. Only a few years later, the company started started producing the first commercial microprocessors. Their central processing units, or CPUs, would come to power many of the world’s personal computers.

The museum has exhibits on Intel chips and how they are made, and displays the chunky white “bunny suits” that IBM technicians wear to guarantee a super-clean chip assembly process. Other exhibits feature the lives of company founders and notable employees. One recounts how Moore famously predicted the pace at which computing power would increase: The number of transistors in a dense, integrated circuit tended to double about every two years. Since this has held true since 1975, the prediction is now known as Moore’s Law.

 

 

 

Know Before You Go

The museum is located in the Robert N. Noyce building. Currently, due to the spread of COVID-19, the museum is closed. However, their website has a handful of online exhibits.

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September 5, 2020

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