Very-large-scale integration
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Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) of systems of transistor-based circuits into integrated circuits on a single chip first occurred in the 1980s as part of the semiconductor and communication technologies that were being developed.
The first semiconductor chips held one transistor each. Subsequent advances added more and more transistors, and as a consequence more individual functions or systems were integrated over time. The microprocessor is a VLSI device.
The first "generation" of computers relied on vacuum tubes. Then came discrete semiconductor devices, followed by integrated circuits. The first Small-Scale Integration (SSI) ICs had small numbers of devices on a single chip - diodes, transistors, resistors and capacitors (no inductors though), making it possible to fabricate one or more logic gates on a single device. The fourth generation consisted of Large-Scale Integration (LSI), i.e. systems with at least a thousand logic gates. The natural successor to LSI was VLSI (many tens of thousands of gates on a single chip). Current technology has moved far past this mark and today's microprocessors have many million gates and hundreds of millions of individual transistors.
As of mid-2004, billion-transistor processors are not yet economically feasible for most uses, but they are achievable in laboratory settings, and they are clearly on the horizon as semiconductor fabrication moves from the current generation of 90 nanometer (90nm) processes to the next 65nm and 45nm generations.
At one time, there was an effort to name and calibrate various levels of large-scale integration above VLSI. Terms like Ultra-large-scale Integration (ULSI) were used. But the huge number of gates and transistors available on common devices has rendered such fine distinctions moot. Terms suggesting more-than-VLSI levels of integration are no longer in widespread use. Even VLSI is now somewhat quaint, given the common assumption that all microprocessors are VLSI or better.
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VLSI Conferences
- DAC - Design Automation Conference
- CAS - IEEE Circuits and Systems Conferences
- ICSVLSI- IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI
- EDS - IEEE EDS Meetings Calendar
- EDS - IEEE EDS Sponsored, Cosponsored & Topical Conferences
- IEDM - IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting
VLSI Journals
- ED - IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices
- EDL - IEEE Electron Device Letters
- CAD - IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
- JSSC - IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits
- VLSI - IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems
- CAS II - IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Analogy and Digital Signal Processing
- SM - IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing
- SSE - Solid-State Electronics
- SST - Solid-State Technology
- TCAD - Journal of Technology Computer-Aided Design
Further reading
- Carver Mead, Lynn Conway, Introduction to VLSI Systems (Addison-Wesley, 1980)
- Neil H.E. Weste, David Harris, CMOS VLSI Design (Addison-Wesley, 3rd Edition)
External links
- Design of VLSI Systems (http://lsiwww.epfl.ch/LSI2001/teaching/webcourse/toc.html)