Editing Very-large-scale integration (section)

== History ==
=== Background ===
The [[history of the transistor]] dates to the 1920s when several inventors attempted devices that were intended to control current in solid-state diodes and convert them into triodes.  Success came after World War II, when the use of silicon and germanium crystals as radar detectors led to improvements in fabrication and theory.  Scientists who had worked on radar returned to solid-state device development.  With the invention of the first [[transistor]] at [[Bell Labs]] in 1947, the field of electronics shifted from vacuum tubes to [[solid-state device]]s.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Zorpette |first=Glenn |date=20 November 2022 |title=How the First Transistor Worked |url=https://spectrum.ieee.org/transistor-history |journal=IEEE Spectrum}}</ref>

With the small transistor at their hands, electrical engineers of the 1950s saw the possibilities of constructing far more advanced circuits.  However, as the complexity of circuits grew, problems arose.<ref name="The History of the Integrated Circuit" /> One problem was the size of the circuit. A complex circuit like a computer was dependent on speed.  If the components were large, the wires interconnecting them must be long.  The electric signals took time to go through the circuit, thus slowing the computer.<ref name="The History of the Integrated Circuit">{{Cite web |title=The History of the Integrated Circuit |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/educational/physics/integrated_circuit/history/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180629102838/https://www.nobelprize.org/educational/physics/integrated_circuit/history/ |archive-date=29 Jun 2018 |access-date=21 Apr 2012 |publisher=Nobelprize.org}}</ref>

The [[invention of the integrated circuit]] by [[Jack Kilby]] and [[Robert Noyce]] solved this problem by making all the components and the chip out of the same block (monolith) of semiconductor material.<ref>{{Cite web |title=BBC - History - Historic Figures: Kilby and Noyce (1923-2005) |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/kilby_and_noyce.shtml |access-date=2024-08-10 |website=www.bbc.co.uk |language=en-GB}}</ref>  The circuits could be made smaller, and the manufacturing process could be automated.  This led to the idea of integrating all components on a single-crystal silicon wafer, which led to small-scale integration (SSI) in the early 1960s, and then medium-scale integration (MSI) in the late 1960s.<ref>{{Citation |last=O’Regan |first=Gerard |title=The Invention of the Integrated Circuit and the Birth of Silicon Valley |date=2016 |work=Introduction to the History of Computing: A Computing History Primer |pages=93–100 |editor-last=O'Regan |editor-first=Gerard |url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33138-6_7 |access-date=2024-08-10 |series=Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science |place=Cham |publisher=Springer International Publishing |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-33138-6_7 |isbn=978-3-319-33138-6|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

=== VLSI ===
{{See also|MOS integrated circuit}}

[[General Microelectronics]] introduced the first commercial [[MOSFET|MOS]] [[integrated circuit]] in 1964.<ref>{{Cite web |title=1964: First Commercial MOS IC Introduced |url=http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/timeline/1964-Commecial.html |website=[[Computer History Museum]]}}</ref> In the early 1970s, MOS integrated circuit technology allowed the integration of more than 10,000 transistors in a single chip.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hittinger |first=William C. |date=1973 |title=Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Technology |journal=Scientific American |volume=229 |issue=2 |pages=48–59 |bibcode=1973SciAm.229b..48H |doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0873-48 |issn=0036-8733 |jstor=24923169}}</ref> This paved the way for VLSI in the 1970s and 1980s, with tens of thousands of MOS transistors on a single chip (later hundreds of thousands, then millions, and now billions).

The first semiconductor chips held two transistors each. Subsequent advances added more transistors, and as a consequence, more individual functions or systems were integrated over time. The first integrated circuits held only a few devices, perhaps as many as ten [[diode]]s, [[transistor]]s, [[resistor]]s and [[capacitor]]s, making it possible to fabricate one or more [[logic gate]]s on a single device. Now known retrospectively as ''[[Integrated circuit#SSI, MSI and LSI|small-scale integration]]'' (SSI), improvements in technique led to devices with hundreds of logic gates, known as ''[[Integrated circuit#SSI, MSI and LSI|medium-scale integration]]'' (MSI). Further improvements led to ''[[Integrated circuit#SSI, MSI and LSI|large-scale integration]]'' (LSI), i.e. systems with at least a thousand logic gates. Current technology has moved far past this mark and today's [[microprocessor]]s have many millions of gates and billions of individual transistors.

At one time, there was an effort to name and calibrate various levels of large-scale integration above VLSI. Terms like ''[[Integrated circuit#ULSI, WSI, SoC and 3D-IC|ultra-large-scale integration]]'' (ULSI) were used. But the huge number of gates and transistors available on common devices has rendered such fine distinctions moot. Terms suggesting greater than VLSI levels of integration are no longer in widespread use.

In 2008, billion-transistor processors became commercially available. This became more commonplace as semiconductor fabrication advanced from the then-current generation of [[65 nanometer|65&nbsp;nm]] processors. Current designs, unlike the earliest devices, use extensive [[Electronic Design Automation|design automation]] and automated [[logic synthesis]] to [[integrated circuit layout|lay out]] the transistors, enabling higher levels of complexity in the resulting logic functionality. Certain high-performance logic blocks, like the SRAM ([[static random-access memory]]) cell, are still designed by hand to ensure the highest efficiency.{{Citation needed|date=August 2020|reason=This claim needs a reliable source. All online sources which seem to hint to this seem to have copied straight from this Wikipedia article}}