Alternative Title: VLSI
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digital computer architecture
The process of very-large-scale integrated (VLSI) circuit design involves a number of stages, which characteristically are as follows: (1) creating the initial functional or behavioral specification, (2) encoding this specification into a hardware description language, (3) breaking down the design into modules and generating sizes and shapes for the eventual chip components, and (4) chip...
fourth generation computers
By the beginning of the 1980s integrated circuitry had advanced to very large-scale integration (VLSI). This design and manufacturing technology greatly increased the circuit density of microprocessor, memory, and support chips—i.e., those that serve to interface microprocessors with input-output devices. By the 1990s some VLSI circuits contained more than 3 million transistors on a...
...in household appliances and automobiles, for which electronic controls had previously been too expensive to consider. Continued advances in IC technology gave rise to very large-scale integration (VLSI), which substantially increased the circuit density of microprocessors. These technological advances, coupled with further cost reductions stemming from improved manufacturing methods, made...
As large-scale integration and then very-large-scale integration have progressively increased the number of transistors that can be placed on one semiconductor chip, so the processing capacity of microcomputers using such single chips has grown commensurately. During the 1980s microcomputers came to be used widely in other applications besides electronic game systems and other relatively simple...
...(LSI), which made it possible to pack thousands of transistors, diodes, and resistors onto a silicon chip less than 0.2 inch (5 mm) square. During the early 1980s very-large-scale integration (VLSI) vastly increased the circuit density of microprocessors. A single VLSI circuit holds hundreds of thousands of electronic components on a chip identical in size to the LSI circuit.
The main reasons why the MOSFET has surpassed the bipolar transistor and become the dominant device for very-large-scale integrated circuits are: (1) the MOSFET can be easily scaled down to smaller dimensions, (2) it consumes much less power, and (3) it has relatively simple processing steps, and this results in a high manufacturing yield ( i.e., the ratio of good devices to the total).