Intellectual property Toolkit

Europe honours father of the one-chip CPU

Published: 04 May 2006 12:10 BST

Former Intel engineer Federico Faggin has received an award from the European Commission (EC) and the European Patent Office (EPO) to honour his role in the development of the microprocessor.

Faggin was given the lifetime achievement prize at the first-ever European Inventor of the Year award ceremony, which took place in Brussels on Wednesday evening.

Although there is some controversy over who came up with the microprocessor first, Intel created the first one that was commercially viable: the 4004. Its engineers Faggin, Stanley Mazor and Ted Hoff worked together on the chip, introduced to the mass market in November 1971.

According to the European Inventor of the Year Web site, "The world we live in today might have looked quite different had it not been for Federico Faggin; the engineer was the first person to fit an entire CPU on a single chip. The invention of the microprocessor heralded the way for modern computers, calculators and high-tech cars."

Faggin left Intel in 1974 to set up semiconductor company Zilog and now works as the chief executive of electronics company Foveon.

Also honoured in the European Inventor of the Year awards was Peter Grünberg, a professor at the Jülich Research Centre in Germany. Grünberg's discovery of the Giant-Magnetoresistance Effect enabled a dramatic increase in the capacity of hard drives.

"His [discovery of the] Giant-Magnetoresistance Effect (GMR) vastly increased the data volume stored per square centimetre of hard drive and it is used in computers and mobile entertainment devices, such as MP3 players," said the European Inventor of the Year Web site. "Today, more than 90 per cent of all hard drives use Grünberg's technology."

The awards, jointly organised by the EC and the EPO, honour innovative companies and individuals.