Three Questions for Computing Pioneer Carver Mead

Computer scientist Carver Mead gave Moore’s Law its name in around 1970 and played a crucial role in making sure it’s held true in the decades since. He pioneered an approach to designing complex silicon chips, called very large scale integration (VLSI), that’s still influential today. Mead was responsible for a string of firsts in the semiconductor industry, and as a professor at the California Institute of Technology he taught many of Silicon Valley’s most famous technologists. In the 1980s, frustration with the limitations of standard computers led him to begin building chips modeled on mammalian brains—creating a field known as neuromorphic computing, which is now gaining new momentum. Now 79, Mead retains an office at Caltech, where he told MIT Technology Review why computer engineers should be investigating new forms of computing.