VLSI - Very Large Scale Integration

VLSI has been around for a long time, there is nothing new about it ... but as a side effect of advances in the world of computers, there has been a dramatic proliferation of tools that can be used to design VLSI circuits.

Alongside, obeying Moore's law, the capability of an IC has increased exponentially over the years, in terms of computation power, utilization of available area, yield.

The combined effect of these two advances is that people can now put diverse functionality into the IC's, opening up new frontiers. Examples are embedded systems, where intelligent devices are put inside everyday objects.

VLSI (very large-scale integration) is the current level of computer microchip miniaturization and refers to microchips containing in the hundreds of thousands of transistors.

LSI (large-scale integration) meant microchips containing thousands of transistors. Earlier, MSI (medium-scale integration) meant a microchip containing hundreds of transistors and SSI (small-scale integration) meant transistors in the tens.