Ed Turney, who co-founded Advanced Micro Devices with seven others in 1969, died Wednesday at age 79, of brain cancer, his family said in a statement.
Born in Brooklyn in 1929, Turney served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. He got his start in the chip industry as a salesman for Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963, before helping to start Advanced Micro Devices in May 1969 with a group of former Fairchild Semiconductor executives. He left the company in 1974, continuing to work in the industry with smaller firms and helping to get funding for semiconductor start-ups.
He was buried on the weekend in Los Altos, California, next to his mother, Rose.