Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining thousands of transistors into a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when complex semiconductor and communication technologies were being developed. Themicroprocessor is a VLSI device. Before the introduction of VLSI technology most ICs had a limited set of functions they could perform. An electronic circuit might consist of a CPU, ROM, RAM and other glue logic. VLSI lets IC designers add all of these into one chip.
During the mid-1920s, several inventors attempted devices that were intended to control current in solid-state diodes and convert them into triodes. Success did not come until after WWII, during which the attempt to improve silicon and germanium crystals for use as radar detectors led to improvements in fabrication and in the understanding of quantum mechanical states of carriers in semiconductors. Then scientists who had been diverted to radar development returned to solid-state device development. With the invention of transistors at Bell Labs in 1947, the field of electronics shifted from vacuum tubes to solid-state devices.
With the small transistor at their hands, electrical engineers of the 1950s saw the possibilities of constructing far more advanced circuits. As the complexity of circuits grew, problems arose.[1]
One problem was the size of the circuit. A complex circuit, like a computer, was dependent on speed. If the components of the computer were too large or the wires interconnecting them too long, the electric signals couldn’t travel fast enough through the circuit, thus making the computer too slow to be effective.[1]
Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments found a solution to this problem in 1958. Kilby’s idea was to make all the components and the chip out of the same block (monolith) of semiconductor material. Kilby presented his idea to his superiors, and was allowed to build a test version of his circuit. In September 1958, he had his first integrated circuit ready.[1] Although the first integrated circuit was crude and had some problems, the idea was groundbreaking. By making all the parts out of the same block of material and adding the metal needed to connect them as a layer on top of it, there was no need for discrete components. No more wires and components had to be assembled manually. The circuits could be made smaller, and the manufacturing process could be automated. From here, the idea of integrating all components on a single silicon wafer came into existence, which led to development in small-scale integration (SSI) in the early 1960s, medium-scale integration (MSI) in the late 1960s, and then large-scale integration (LSI) as well as VLSI in the 1970s and 1980s, with tens of thousands of transistors on a single chip (later hundreds of thousands, then millions, and now billions (109)).
MJ VLSI Design 