Federico Faggin is the most illustrious Italian who has worked in Silicon Valley and is known as the father of the microprocessor and the “Italian Steve Jobs”.

In 2019, he received the Magna Grecia International Award, given to him by astrophysicist Sandra Savaglio, during the first international annual meeting "SudeFuturi" held in Mondello and organized by the Magna Grecia Foundation chaired by President Nino Foti.

Born in Vicenza in 1941, he immediately proved to be an extremely gifted child, embarking on a technical-scientific training at a very young age thanks to his attendance at the "Alessandro Rossi" Industrial Technical Institute in Vicenza and the research and design activity, carried out at the age of 19, at Olivetti.

He decided to continue his studies by enrolling in the Physics course at the University of Padova, he graduated summa laude in 1965, immediately being awarded a tenured position and being able to continue his research on flying-spot scanners, the subject of his thesis.

In 1967, he was hired by SGS-Fairchild (now STMicroelectronics) in Agrate Brianza, where he developed and designed the first two commercial MOS integrated circuits.

The following year, the future "father" of the microprocessor had the opportunity to do a six-month internship in California, at the US division of SGS/Fairchild, a crucial experience in Faggin's professional and personal life, because if on the one hand it sparked his career, on the other it marked his farewell to the “Bel Paese”.

During his first years in the United States, he broadened his knowledge of MOS technology, applying it to the creation of the first integrated circuit (the 3708) and laying the foundations for the related production processes, still used today for the realization of over 90% of integrated circuits on the market. Shortly after, he decided to settle permanently in the USA and in 1970, he joined Intel, a company set up together with former colleagues, where, together with Ted Hoff (American engineer and inventor) and Stanley Mazor (American mathematician and computer scientist). In 1974 he created what is officially known as the first microprocessor in history: the Intel 4004.

Faggin thus developed the random logic design methodology, which was then used to design the first generations of Intel microprocessors, which surpassed the calculation of the historic ENIAC, the world's first electronic calculator. However, having a different view from Intel's management, especially regarding the potential of microprocessors, the illustrious Italian founded a new company that focused exclusively on the development of microprocessors, becoming market leader in 1976 thanks to Z80.

Faggin and his team were also responsible for promoting the first Touchscreens and Touchpads in 1994. Legendary was the "No, thanks" addressed to Steve Jobs, who had tried to buy the touchscreen model of the Italian, so as to use it for the iPhone:

"… After seeing it, he wanted to buy it outright. If we had allowed him to do so, he would have put us in a weak position. We didn't accept, and so he made his own, creating a market for competitors and making our company even greater."

If today we use devices that allow us to manage information in the blink of an eye, if the term "microchip" has become a household name and if we give instructions to our tablets with a simple touch of our fingers, we owe it to Federico Faggin, who has been presented with several awards, including the "Kyoto Award" for Advanced Technologies in 1997, the Masi Civiltà Veneta Award representing the cultural values of the Veneto region. He also received an honorary degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Tor Vergata and, in 2010, the "National Medal of Technology and Innovation", the highest US award in the field of technological innovation, awarded to him by President Obama.

In 2019 he wrote his biography entitled Silicio in recognition of Silicon Valley, whose name derives from the excessive presence of silicon, an element with which the first microcircuits were produced:

"I spent my life working ten hours a day, often on Saturdays and Sundays, looking for solutions to technical and scientific problems that I was passionate about. My father used to say that, when I was five years old, I ran up to him grief-stricken: "Dad, I want to invent some things, but they have all already been invented! I started very early to disassemble objects to understand how they were made and to build new ones with waste materials. Then, one day, I saw a model plane flying and I was blown away."