VLSI - Very Large Scale Integration - The technology for concentrating many thousands of semiconductor devices on a single integrated

circuit. The lineage of VLSI technology began in 1833, when Michael Faraday ( After whom the unit of measurement of electrical capacitance the farad (F) - is named ) first recorded the semiconductor effect. The next remarkable achievement was made by Russell Ohl in 1940, who discovered the p-n junction effects in silicon that lead to the development of junction transistors. Soon after World War II, in 1947, the semiconductor technology entered a new phase when, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain (Bell labs) invented the revolutionary semiconductor device called Point-Contact Transistor. Bell Labs named the first type of transistor as "Type A" transistor. Which was then followed by further inventions and discoveries that led to invention of the first integrated chip, in 1958. Two years later, the concept of Metal Oxide Semiconductor transistor was demonstrated. With further research into MOS transistors, in 1963 Complementary MOS Circuit Configuration was invented which combines p-channel and n-channel MOS transistors in a complementary symmetric circuit configuration, which drew close to zero power in standby mode. After inventing various types of transistors, then its the turn of various logic families. The year 1960 marked with the invention of the TransistorTransistor Logic, which was considered to be the IC revolution. However, there were some logic families which precede TTL, like, Diode Logic, Resistor Transistor Logic, Diode Transistor Logic, and Emitter Coupled Logic. The TTL was followed by PMOS, NOMS, CMOS, and BiCMOS logic families. Various logic families were used to integrate several transistors on a single chip (known as an integrated chip). In early days, few transistors were integrated on a single chip, and called it as Small-Scale Integration (SSI) (around 1960). The next step in the development of integrated circuits took in the late 1960s, with devices which contained hundreds of transistors on each chip, called Medium-Scale Integration (MSI), where TTL logic was used. In mid 1970s, with tens of thousands of transistors integrated per chip, led to Large-Scale Integration (LSI), during which the first microprocessors (8-bit) were manufactured. Then in 1980s, there came the final step in the development process, hundreds of thousands of transistors were integrated, and called as Very LargeScale Integration, shortly VLSI. There was a proposal for the Ultra-Large Scale Integration (ULSI) to

mark the integration of millions of transistors on a single chip(for example in 32-bit and 64-bit microprocessors), which was not widely accepted, because of which the current generation in IC technology is VLSI.