VLSI chip design (Mead Conway, Lynn Conway) (readme)

 Mead–Conway VLSI chip design revolution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead%E2%80%93Conway_VLSI_chip_design_revolution

In 1978–79, when approximately 20,000 transistors could be fabricated in a single chip, Carver Mead and Lynn Conway wrote the textbook Introduction to VLSI Systems.[1] It was published in 1979 and became a bestseller, since it was the first VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) design textbook usable by non-physicists. The authors intended the book to fill a gap in the literature and introduce electrical engineering and computer science students to integrated system architecture. This textbook triggered a breakthrough in education, as well as in industry practice. Computer science and electrical engineering professors throughout the world started teaching VLSI system design using this textbook. Many of them also obtained a copy of Lynn Conway's notes from her famous MIT course in 1978, which included a collection of exercises.[4]

https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/VLSIarchive.html

 "Carver A. Mead, Lynn Conway:  By the mid-1970s, digital system designers eager to create higher-performance devices were frustrated by having to use off-the-shelf large-scale-integration logic. It stymied their efforts to make chips sufficiently compact or cost-effective to turn their very large-scale visions into timely realities. In 1978, a landmark book titled Introduction to VLSI Systems changed all of that. Co-authored by Mead, the Gordon and Betty E. Moore professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, and Conway, research fellow and manager of the VLSI system design area at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, the book provided the structure for a new integrated system design culture that made VLSI design both feasible and practical. Introduction to VLSI Systems resulted from work done by Mead and Conway while they were part of the Silicon Structures Project, a cooperative effort between Xerox and Caltech. Mead was known for his ideas on simplified custom-circuit design, which most semiconductor manufacturers viewed with great skepticism but were finding increasing support from computer and systems firms interested in affordable, high-performance devices tailored to their needs. Conway had established herself at IBM’s research headquarters as an innovator in the design of architectures for ultrahigh-performance computers. She invented scalable VLSI design rules for silicon that triggered Mead and Conway’s success in simplifying the interface between the design and fabrication of complex chips. The structured VLSI design methodology that they presented, the “Mead-Conway concept,” helped bring about a fundamental reassessment of how to put ICs together.”

Introduction to VLSI Systems resulted from work done by Mead and Conway while they were part of the Silicon Structures Project, a cooperative effort between Xerox and Caltech.

Mead was known for his ideas on simplified custom-circuit design, which most semiconductor manufacturers viewed with great skepticism but were finding increasing support from computer and systems firms interested in affordable, high-performance devices tailored to their needs. 

Conway had established herself at IBM’s research headquarters as an innovator in the design of architectures for ultrahigh-performance computers.

She invented scalable VLSI design rules for silicon that triggered Mead and Conway’s success in simplifying the interface between the design and fabrication of complex chips.

It also led to DARPA sponsorship of VLSI research in the universities to follow-up on the Mead-Conway innovations and to DARPA support of rapid-chip-prototyping via a new national-level service called "MOSIS" (directly based on the MPC system technology  Lynn pioneered at PARC). 

https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Memoirs/VLSI/SSCM/VLSI_Reminiscences.pdf

https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/MPCAdv/MPCAdv.html

https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Impact/Impact.html

https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/VLSIarchive.html

https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/VLSIText/VLSIText.html

https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/InstGuide/InstGuide.pdf

[[ read this ]]

https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/MPCAdv/MPCAdv.html

THE MPC ADVENTURES :
Experiences with the Generation of VLSI Design and Implementation Methodologies
by Lynn Conway

Transcribed from an Invited Lecture at the Second Caltech Conference on Very Large Scale Integration,
January 19,1981
Lynn Conway
 
VLSI-81-2
Copyright @ 1981, Lynn Conway. All Rights Reserved.
XEROX
PALO ALTO RESEARCH CENTER
3333 Coyote Hill Road/Palo Alto/California 94304

Xerox PARC Technical Report VLSI-81-2  [PDF]

https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/MPCAdv/MPCAdv.pdf
https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/MPCAdv/MPCAdv.html

 
    Copyright @ 1981, Lynn Conway. All Rights Reserved.
Also published as: "The MPC Adventures", by Lynn Conway,
Microprocessing and Microprogramming - The Euromicro Journal, Vol. 10, No. 4,
November 1982, pp  209-228. PDF (20p; 8.0mb)

Editor's note, 1-10-15: In this report, Lynn described the methods used to deliberately generate the engineering paradigm shift later known as the "VLSI Revolution". However, being an early exploration in "social physics", the concepts went completely over the heads of audiences back in 1981.

Lynn's methods ended up simply being taken for granted, and her role in causing the paradigm shift faded from history. It wasn't until late 2012, when Lynn stepped forward and published her "VLSI Reminiscences", that people began to fathom the depth of what had actually happened (as in CHM 2014 and IEEE 2015).