The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
Very-large-scale integration, or VLSI for short, is a term related to integrated circuits. Integrated circuits are chips, such as the Intel Pentium chip, which reside inside a computer and function in the performance of the computer. A silicon chip consists of transistors, electrical gates that amplify an electrical signal and allow the current to flow. The transistors power the performance of other components of the chip, such as logic elements (also called memory cells). VLSI refers to an integrated circuit composed of hundreds of thousands of these memory cells
The first practical chip was made in 1959 by two companies, Fairchild and Texas Instruments. As with many technologies, advancements after this initial achievement produced products of improved performance and construction. In 1971, Intel was successful in combining logic elements, which formally were housed in several different chips, into a single chip. Subsequently, chips became smaller, faster, and less expensive over time. Engineers learned how to pack more and more logic elements into a single circuit. This effort gave rise to VLSI, where millions of transistors are packed onto a circuit.
VLSI technology has made today's portable and high-performance computers possible. Spin-off technologies directly attributable to VLSI include the Global Positioning System, which required a processor capable of performing billions of calculations per second. Commercial collaborations between companies engaged in VLSI research and network providers have produced home networks that are extremely fast and capable of many simultaneous functions.
Further developments are on the horizon. Within the next decade, a central feature controlling the size of integrated circuitry--metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor channel length--will shrink into the range of 50 nanometers, a measurement less than 200 atoms in length. Such minuscule chips, on which will reside the entire operating information for a computer, will enable computer size to shrink. The manual dexterity and operating comfort of the user may well be the limiting factor determining how small computers become. And, for computers that operate within human input, molecular dimensions are conceivable.