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.
He was buried Saturday in Los Altos, California, next to his mother, Rose.
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.
Turney left the company in 1974, continuing to work in the industry with smaller firms and helping to get funding for semiconductor start-ups.
AMD was recently beset by numerous challenges .
However, a move to split the company into two early this month, received a multi-million dollar backing from a couple of Abu Dhabi-based investment firms.