Sunlin Chou, who spent 34 years at Intel and was among its top Oregon researchers, died Dec. 5. He was 72.

Chou started his career in the chip industry in 1968 at Fairchild Semiconductor, an Intel forerunner, and joined his former colleagues at Intel three years later. He later ran Intel’s Portland Technology Development unit in Aloha and became an Intel vice president. He was named head of Intel’s manufacturing group in 1998 and ran it until his retirement in 2005.

Born in Hong Kong, where his mother taught high school and his father taught economics, Chou told The Oregonian in 1996 that he found his mind worked differently from his classmates.

“I spent a lot of time thinking about how things worked as a child,” Chou said, attributing that early inquisitiveness with spawning his career in semiconductors. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University before joining Intel.

Intel credits Chou with creating a methodology for taking advanced technologies from the research stage into production, and leading the development of new memory chip technologies during the 1980s. He was also an accomplished classical guitarist, an avid ping pong player and a cook.

Chou resided in Battle Ground, Washington, just north of Vancouver, at the time of his death.

He is survived by his wife Priscilla, a software contractor whom he met at a party hosted by legendary Intel chief executive Andy Grove in the 1970s.

-- Mike Rogoway | twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699