Born in 1937, Marcian was raised in New York. He attended the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy where he earned a BEE in 1958. While in school, Hoff worked for the General Railway Signal Company where he would eventually find the discoveries that led to two patents. He would go on to receive a MS from Stanford in 1959. In 1962, he would gain his PhD and his career would begin.

Intel employed Hoff in 1962 and by 1980; Marcian E. Hoff had been awarded the status of "Intel Fellow" which was the highest level of achievement that Hoff could gain as an Intel employee. After Intel awarded Hoff to signify his status as the highest technical position held at Intel, Hoff went on to work with Atari in the eighties before taking the position that he held in his later years at Teklicon.

Marcian E Hoff is best known for the development of a single-chip CPU. This chip was developed while he was working at Intel. Thanks to the innovative brilliance of Hoff and the team at Intel, the Japanese company Buscicom would approach Intel. In February 1971, the company had a product that included the first working CPU.

Thanks to the CPU and the microprocessor findings that Hoff and his team developed, the industry has been forever changed. Hoff's impact on the world of technology has been profound and will allow future developments to stem from his initial invention.