Silicon is presently the most important semiconductor for the electronics industry, with VLSI technology being based almost entirely on silicon. It is the second most abundant element after oxygen. Diodes and transistors fabricated using silicon are building blocks of all the devices used today. Number of transistor in a chip has increased at an exponent rate. The chips are also classified on the basis of number of transistor present in it. The classification is as follows:
1. Small Scale Integration (SSI) - These are the circuits containing transistors numbering in tens. They were very crucial in the development of early computers.
2. Medium-Scale Integration (MSI) – MSI contained hundreds of transistors on a chip. They allowed more complex systems to be produced using smaller circuit boards relative to SSI.
3. Large-Scale Integration (LSI) – LSI contains tens of thousands of transistors. In 1970s LSI started getting manufactured in very large quantities.
4. Very Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) – These circuits contain hundreds of thousands of transistors and are currently being used for many applications. The first megabit RAM chip with more than one million integrated transistors was developed in 1986.
5. Ultra Large-Scale Integration (ULSI) – Circuits with more than one million transistors come under this…show more content… This trend in the industry was predicted long before in 1965 by Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. The observation was termed as Moore’s Law. Moore’s law states that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit will be doubled after every two years. He projected that this trend will continue for atleast another decade but this prediction proved to be accurate for several decades. Moore’s law has been guiding the industry for long terms goals and set targets to make their products better, faster and
