The Silicon Genesis Project is an on-going oral history project on the history of Silicon Valley and the semiconductor industry, conducted by volunteers and housed at the Stanford University Library.
The Silicon Genesis project was started and built upon the inspiration of Rob Walker (1935-2016). Rob was a Silicon Valley native and Silicon Valley educated electrical engineer, who was involved with the semiconductor industry since the 1960s at Fairchild, Intel and as a founder of LSI Logic. He understood that if the stories of these pioneers were not captured for the benefit of future public access, they would be untold and lost forever. In 1995, Rob began a project with the Silicon Valley Archives in the Stanford University Libraries to record oral history interviews focused on the history of the semiconductor industry. The resulting video recordings and interview transcripts form the basis for the Silicon Genesis collection at Stanford, and available for researchers and others with an interest in this history.
The Silicon Valley Archives in the Stanford Libraries provides access to several collections related to the Silicon Genesis oral histories. These include the Rob Walker Papers, the Silicon Destiny collection of oral history cassette tapes, videos, and transcripts assembled for Rob Walker's book Silicon Destiny, and the Silicon Genesis collection, which includes physical media for many of the interviews in the series featured in the exhibit.
Subjects to be interviewed have been chosen based on their historic contributions to the semiconductor and related industries. Persons conducting the interviews are former executives of semiconductor companies and have expertise in the fields being discussed. These individuals have volunteered their time to identify persons of historic interest, scheduled and conducted interviews, assist with post-production, and review transcripts. Once posted, interviews are available as both streaming video files and lightly edited transcripts.
Prior to 2020, most interviews were typically conducted one-on-one in an informal and comfortable setting, often the home of the interviewee. More recent interviews have been conducted on the Stanford campus, often the Green Library. Interviews start with a bit of family and personal history, educational background, and then dive a range of relevant topics relating to the subject's historical contributions to the semiconductor or related industry.
The Stanford Library highlights individual interviews that are grouped together according to an area of interest. As of January 2025, there were 18 featured collections from companies, venture capital and industry associations SEMI and the Semiconductor Industry Association.