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Victor Poor, An Early Microprocessor Engineer, Passed Away Last Week at Age 79

By Wong Chung Wee - on 21 Aug 2012, 11:15am

Victor Poor, An Early Microprocessor Engineer, Passed Away Last Week at Age 79

Victor Poor, a pioneer microprocessor engineer, passed away last Friday at age 79, following his battle with pancreatic cancer. His work in Intel lead to the creation of the 8008 and 8088 microprocessor families that formed the foundation for Intel's creation of the x86 instruction set architecture. This lead to the company's creation of the modern x86 CPU that we are most familiar with today.

(Image Source: floridatoday.com)

Victor Poor approached Intel with his idea to build a single-chip processor. At that time, Intel was already working on a similar chip, the 4004, for the Nippon Calculating Machine Corporation (Nippon CMC). Eventually, Mr. Poor joined Intel in 1969 to work on the 8008 and 8088 microprocessor families. This lead to the company's deeper involvement with the microprocessor market and its eventual dominance with Intel's x86 instruction set architecture.

Besides his pioneering work in Intel, he also lent his engineering ideas to the development of a computer networking system called ARCNET. He retired from Intel in 1984 and continued to develop ARCNET and enhanced it with a wireless data communications system called APlink. The wireless system was widely adopted by radio amateurs, the United States military, and emergency response teams. This system proved its mettle as it was credited with being one of the few communications systems that was still operational in the destructive wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Victor Dale Poor was born in in Los Angeles, CA, United States of America on July 12, 1933. He passed away last week in Palm Bay, Florida. He is survived by his wife and two children.

(Source: floridatoday.com, bit-tech.net, Wikipedia (1), (2), The New York Times)

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