Implications Of VLSI On Computer Design(Panel Discussion)

Strictly speaking, the term “Very Large Scale Integration” refers to the number of gates or elementary cells which can be reliably fabricated on a single integrated circuit chip. The current state of the art yields memory chips having 16K elements and random logic (microprocessor) chips having 5K gates. The near future should see 64K bit memory chips and 10K gate random logic chips in production. Utilizing this tremendous gate density in the design of the “random logic” portion of computers is not at all straight-forward. It is the objective of this panel session to identify and discuss many of the technical issues related to designing computers with VLSI. This document will serve to highlight several of these issues. A brief bibliography is included for those who would like to pursue this subject further.