Intel Co-founder Moore Looks Back on a Legendary IT Career

Looking back, Moore admitted, not every project went as planned. In fact, he said, many mistakes were made by his companies. It's all part of the experience, he said.

"Along the way, we did make lots of mistakes," Moore said. "The $15 million watch we tried to develop in 1974 or '75 was one of them. This was going to be an all-everything product: It was a watch, computer, weather predictor and it was supposed to do lots of other things, all powered by a hard disk. But the performance was terrible. Turns out we weren't very good at the watch business."

What was the hardest decision he had to make?

"Easy," Moore said. "Anytime we had to lay off people was extremely difficult. During the oil crisis in 1974, and during a Silicon Valley recession in 1985, we had to shut down plants and let go of people—some 9,000 one time. That's always the hardest thing to do."

Curiously, Moore, who resides with his wife, Betty, in Woodside, Calif., doesn't use a lot of chip-loaded gadgets himself. "I have a cell phone and a computer. That's about it," he said.

Has there been anything in IT development over the past few years that has surprised him? "No. Nothing lately has surprised me," Moore said.

Naturally. He's already seen just about everything.