The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley

by Leslie Berlin

To use the microprocessor, customers had to change their thinking. Before the microprocessor, designers at Intel’s customer firms built their systems by configuring individual integrated circuits, each with a different dedicated function, on a board. Changing the system required changing the physical arrangement of the integrated circuits, or hardware. Intel’s new microprocessor systems required something very different—changes made not by moving physical objects, but by reprogramming the instructions stored in program memory. The microprocessor, in other words, brought software to the semiconductor industry. In doing so, it placed new demands on customers, most of whom were experienced hardware designers unfamiliar with using computer programs to solve their systems problems.84