Preface

The idea for this book came from a textbook I used in graduate school at Cornell University titled Introduction to VLSI Systems, by Carver Mead and Lynn Conway. That textbook, in combination with the MOS Implementation System (MOSIS) Service for integrated circuit prototyping and small volume production, enabled a “hands-on” learning experience that was instrumental in training a new generation of practitioners in very large scale integrated (VLSI) circuit design, layout, and prototyping. This approach democratized VLSI chip design and fabrication by reducing the cost of VLSI circuit prototyping and shortened the turnaround time from years to months, enabling students to design, lay out, and submit chips for fabrication in engineering classes. By providing generic design rules the students did not have to worry about the details for the specific fabrication process. By aggregating small projects into multiproject chips (MPCs) and MPCs into multichip wafers (MCWs), the fabrication cost was decreased by orders of magnitude.