Federico Faggin (born December 1, 1941) is an Italian-American scientist, engineer, inventor, and business leader. He is most famous for designing the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. He managed the 4004 (MCS-4) project and led the design team for the first five years of Intel’s microprocessor development. While working at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968, Faggin developed the self-aligned MOS (metal-oxide-semiconductor) silicon-gate technology (SGT). This innovation made it possible to create MOS semiconductor memory chips, CCD image sensors, and microprocessors. After the 4004, he led the development of the Intel 8008 and 8080 microprocessors, using his SGT method for designing random logic chips, which was critical to early Intel microprocessors. Faggin co-founded (with Ralph Ungermann) and led Zilog, the first company focused entirely on microprocessors. He also led the creation of the Zilog Z80 and Z8 processors. Later, he co-founded and led Cygnet Technologies and Synaptics.

In 2010, Faggin received the 2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest award in the United States for technological achievements. In 2011, he established the Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation to support scientific research on consciousness at U.S. universities and research institutions. In 2015, the Faggin Foundation helped create a $1 million fund for the Faggin Family Presidential Chair in the Physics of Information at UC Santa Cruz. This fund supports studies on fundamental questions at the intersection of physics and related fields, such as mathematics, complex systems, biophysics, and cognitive science, with a focus on the role of information in physics.

Education and early career

Federico was born in Vicenza, Italy, and grew up in a family that valued learning and knowledge. His father, Giuseppe Faggin, was a writer who authored many academic books and translated ancient Greek texts, including the Enneads of Plotinus, into modern Italian with detailed explanations. Federico showed an early interest in technology. He attended a technical high school in Vicenza called I.T.I.S. Alessandro Rossi and later earned a physics degree with highest honors from the University of Padua.

Faggin began working at Olivetti when he was 19 years old. At Olivetti, he helped design and lead the creation of a small digital computer that used magnetic memory (1960). Later, Olivetti’s research team developed one of the first programmable electronic calculators, the Olivetti Programma 101 (1964). After this job, Faggin continued his studies in physics at the University of Padua and taught an electronics laboratory course for third-year physics students during the 1965–1966 academic year.

In 1967, Faggin joined SGS-Fairchild, a company formed by a partnership between an Italian firm, Società Generale Semiconduttori, and an American company, Fairchild Semiconductor. At SGS-Fairchild, he developed a new method for making microchips and designed the first two commercial microchip circuits. Because of his work, the company moved him to Fairchild’s office in Palo Alto, California, in February 1968. When Fairchild ended its partnership with SGS-Fairchild, Faggin stayed with Fairchild to continue his work.

Silicon Valley career

In Palo Alto, Faggin helped develop silicon-gate technology (SGT), creating its unique design process. SGT, a type of MOSFET with a silicon self-aligned gate, became one of the most important changes in microelectronics.

SGT became the base for modern NMOS and CMOS integrated circuits. It allowed key innovations, including MOS semiconductor memory chips, the first microprocessor, and the first CCD and EPROM with floating silicon gates. SGT replaced earlier metal-gate MOS technology and was quickly used worldwide. Within a decade, it made bipolar transistor-based integrated circuits no longer useful.

At Fairchild, Faggin designed the first commercial integrated circuit using SGT with self-aligned MOSFET transistors: the Fairchild 3708. The 3708 was an 8-bit analog multiplexer with decoding logic, replacing the Fairchild 3705, which used metal-gate technology. The 3708 was 5 times faster, had 100 times less junction leakage, and was much more reliable than the 3705, showing the advantages of SGT over metal-gate MOS. See also: Faggin, F., Klein T. (1969). "A Faster Generation of MOS Devices With Low Threshold Is Riding The Crest of the New Wave, Silicon-Gate IC's". Electronics, 29 Sep. 1969.

Federico Faggin joined Intel from Fairchild in 1970 as the project leader and designer of the MCS-4 family of microprocessors, which included the 4004, the world's first single-chip microprocessor. Fairchild was not using SGT, and Faggin wanted to use his new technology to design advanced chips.

The 4004 (1971) was made possible by the advanced features of SGT, which were improved through a new random logic chip design method Faggin created at Intel. This method, along with his design changes, allowed him to fit the microprocessor on one small chip. A single-chip microprocessor—something expected to happen many years later—became possible in 1971 using SGT with two new ideas: (1) "buried contacts" that doubled the circuit density, and (2) bootstrap loads with 2-phase clocks—previously thought impossible with SGT—that increased speed 5 times while reducing chip size by half compared to metal-gate MOS.

The design method Faggin created was used for all Intel's early microprocessors and later for Zilog's Z80.

The Intel 4004—4-bit CPU on a single chip—was part of a group of 4 custom chips made for Busicom, a Japanese calculator company. The other chips in the group (part of the MCS-4 family) were: the 4001, a 2k-bit metal-mask programmable ROM with programmable input-output lines; the 4002, a 320-bit dynamic RAM with a 4-bit output port; and the 4003, a 10-bit serial input and serial/parallel output, static shift register to use as an I/O expander. Faggin pushed for selling the MCS-4 to customers other than Busicom by showing Intel management how customers could use the 4004 to design control systems. He built a 4004 tester using the 4004 as the controller, convincing Bob Noyce to change the exclusivity agreement with Busicom that prevented Intel from selling the MCS-4 line to others.

In 2009, the four people who worked on the 4004 were honored as Fellows of the Computer History Museum. Ted Hoff, head of the Application Research Department, created the design plan and instruction set with help from Stan Mazor and working with Busicom's Masatoshi Shima. None of them were chip designers or familiar with SGT. The silicon design was the missing part needed to make a microprocessor, as everything else was already known. Federico Faggin led the project in a different department without Hoff's and Mazor's involvement. Faggin invented SGT at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968 and added improvements to make the 4004 possible on a single chip. With help from Shima, Faggin completed the chip design in January 1971.

The Intel 2102A was a redesigned version of the Intel 2102 static RAM, where Federico Faggin introduced the depletion load, combining SGT with ionic implantation. The design was done in late 1973 by Faggin and Dick Pashley. The 2102A was 5 times faster than the 2102, starting a new direction for Intel.

Faggin's silicon design method was used for all Intel's early microprocessors.

The Intel 8008 was the first single-chip 8-bit CPU, built with p-channel SGT like the 4004. The 8008 project was originally assigned to Hal Feeney in March 1970 but was paused until the 4004 was completed. It was restarted in January 1971 under Faggin's leadership, using the circuits and methods he developed for the 4004, with Hal Feeney doing the chip design. The 8008's architecture was originally created by CTC Inc. for the Datapoint 2200 intelligent terminal, where it was used in separate IC logic.

The Intel 4040 microprocessor (1974) was an improved, compatible version of the 4004 CPU, allowing it to connect directly to standard memories and I/O devices. Federico Faggin created the 4040's architecture and supervised Tom Innes, who did the design work.

The 8080 microprocessor (1974) was the first high-performance 8-bit microprocessor, using faster n-channel SGT. The 8080 was designed by Faggin and Masatoshi Shima under his supervision. It was a major improvement over the

The theory of consciousness

In the book Irreducible – Consciousness, life, computers, and human nature (Essentia Books, 2024), Federico Faggin suggests that consciousness is a quantum process unique to each person. This idea is supported by two principles from quantum physics: the no-cloning theorem and Holevo's theorem. The no-cloning theorem explains that a specific quantum state cannot be perfectly copied. Holevo's theorem shows that only one piece of classical information (a "bit") can be measured from each quantum unit (a "qubit") that describes a state. These principles suggest that a quantum system in a specific state might be aware of its own state, since personal experiences (called "qualia") share key traits with pure quantum states, such as being private and difficult to observe from the outside. However, the mathematical description of these experiences does not fully explain the experiences themselves, which remain private and only known to the system in that state. Classical machines, like computers, cannot be conscious because classical information (such as programs and data) can be copied perfectly, unlike quantum states. This means consciousness is not tied to the physical body and could continue existing after the body dies. The body would then act like a tool controlled by consciousness. The new D'Ariano-Faggin theory builds on the work of Professor Giacomo D'Ariano, who developed quantum theory using principles from information science, and on the scientific and philosophical research of Federico Faggin about consciousness.

Original documents

• Faggin, F., Klein, T., and Vadasz, L.: "Insulated Gate Field Effect Transistor Integrated Circuits with Silicon Gates." In 1968, Federico Faggin introduced Silicon Gate Technology with self-aligned gates at the IEEE International Electron Device Meeting in Washington D.C. This technology helped create dynamic RAM memories, non-volatile memories, CCD sensors, and microprocessors.
• Federico Faggin and Thomas Klein: "A Faster Generation of MOS Devices with Low Thresholds is Riding the Crest of the New Wave, Silicon-Gate IC's." This article, published in Electronics on 29 September 1969, describes the Fairchild 3708, the first commercial integrated circuit using Silicon Gate Technology. Federico Faggin designed it at Fairchild in 1968.
• F. Faggin, T. Klein: "Silicon-Gate Technology." This paper was published in Solid State Electronics in 1970, Volume 13, pages 1125–1144.

• F. Faggin and M. E. Hoff: "Standard Parts and Custom Design Merge in a Four-chip Processor Kit." Published in Electronics on 24 April 1972.
• F. Faggin, et al.: "The MCS-4 An LSI Microcomputer System." Presented at the IEEE 1972 Region Six Conference.
• Faggin, Federico; Capocaccia, F.: "A New Integrated MOS Shift Register." This paper, published in the Proceedings XV International Electronics Scientific Congress in Rome in April 1968, pages 143–152, describes a static MOS shift register developed at SGS-Fairchild (now ST Micro) in late 1967. Federico Faggin later used this design in the MCS-4 chips, including the 4004.

• Initials F.F. (Federico Faggin) on the 4004 design (1971). The 4004 microprocessor has the initials F.F. of its designer, Federico Faggin, etched on one corner. This was a personal choice to mark the chip’s creator, later followed by other Intel designers.
• Busicom 141-PF Printing Calculator Engineering Prototype (1971). This engineering prototype of the Busicom 141-PF desktop calculator, donated by Federico Faggin to the Computer History Museum in 1996, used the first microprocessor ever made. It was a gift from Busicom’s president, Yoshio Kojima, to Faggin for leading the design of the 4004 and three other chips in the MCS-4 system. Faggin kept the prototype at home for 25 years before donating it to the museum.

Publications

• "The Birth of the Microprocessor" by Federico Faggin. Byte, March 1992, Volume 17, Issue 3, pages 145–150.
• "The History of the 4004" by Federico Faggin, Marcian E. Hoff Jr., Stanley Mazor, and Masatoshi Shima. IEEE Micro, December 1996, Volume 16, Issue 6.
• "The 4004 microprocessor of Faggin, Hoff, Mazor, and Shima." IEEE Solid State Circuits Magazine, Winter 2009, Volume 1, Issue 1.
• "The MOS silicon gate technology and the first microprocessors" by Federico Faggin. La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento, 2015, Issue 12–December. SIF (Italian Physical Society).
• "How we made the microprocessor" by Federico Faggin. Nature Electronics, Volume 1, January 2018. Published online: 8 January 2018.
• "Hard Problem and Free Will: an information-theoretical approach" by Giacomo Mauro D'Ariano and Federico Faggin. arXiv:2012.06580, 28 January 2021.

• Silicon: From the Invention of the Microprocessor to the New Science of Consciousness by Federico Faggin. Waterside Productions, February 2021.
• Artificial Intelligence Versus Natural Intelligence. Springer International Publishing, January 2022.
• Irriducibile – La coscienza, la vita, i computer e la nostra natura by Federico Faggin. Mondadori, August 2022. "Sono convinto che quando capiremo che la fisica quantistica non descrive la realtà esteriore ma quella interiore essa cesserà di essere incomprensibile."
• Irreducible – Consciousness, life, computers, and human nature by Federico Faggin. Essentia Books, 2024.
• Oltre l'invisibile. Dove scienza e spiritualità si uniscono by Federico Faggin. Mondadori, June 2024.

Awards

Here are the sources for the awards mentioned:

• 2012: Global Information Technology Award from the President of Armenia.
• 2012: Honorary PhD from the Polytechnic University of Armenia.
• 2012: Premio Franca Florio, awarded by Ministro Francesco Profumo and Prof. Ing. Patrizia Livreri.
• 2013: Honorary PhD in science from Chapman University (CA).
• 2014: Enrico Fermi Award, awarded by the Italian Society of Physics: "For the invention of the MOS silicon gate technology that helped create the first modern microprocessor in 1971."
• 2018: 2018 IEEE Italy Section Honorary Award to Federico Faggin for his outstanding contributions to the self-aligned MOS silicon gate theory and technology and to the development of the first microprocessor.
• 2018: 2018 AAAS Fellow, awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• 2019: PhD (Dottorato di ricerca) honoris causa in computer engineering from the University of Pisa (Italy).
• 2023: Sigillum Magnum from the University of Bologna.