The electronics industry has achieved a tremendous growth over the last few decades, mainly due to the rapid advances in integration technologies and large-scale systems design. The use of integrated circuits in high-performance computing, telecommunications, and consumer electronics has been growing at a very fast pace. Typically, the required computational and information processing power of these applications is the driving force for the fast development of this field. This trend is expected to continue, with very important implications for VLSI and systems design.
As more and more complex functions are required in various data processing and telecommunications devices, the need to integrate these functions in a small package is also increasing. The level of integration as measured by the number of logic gates in a monolithic chip has been steadily rising for almost three decades, mainly due to the rapid progress in processing technology and interconnect technology. Table shows the evolution of logic complexity in integrated circuit over last couple of decades.
| Term | Year | Complexity Level |
|---|---|---|
| Single Transistor | 1958 | less than 1 |
| Unit logic | 1960 | 1 |
| Single function | 1962 | 2-4 |
| Multi & complex function | 1964 | 5-20 |
| Medium Scale Integration (MSI) | 1967 | 20-200 |
| Large scale integration (LSI) | 1972 | 200-2000 |
| Very large scale integration (VLSI) | 1978 | 2000-20,000 |
| Ultra large scale integration (ULSI) | 1989 | >20,000 |