Mead & Conway revolution
Encyclopedia
The Mead & Conway revolution was the development of VLSI design and prototyping within or for academic institutions, both for education and research, and consequently breeding new kinds of industries based on microelectronics applications.
called throughout the 1970s for a separation of design from technology, in order to establish EDA
as its own discipline developing its own methodologies. The breakdown is that technologists know how to fabricate smaller and faster transistors, and designers know how to coordinate the cooperation of thousands or millions of transistors.
wrote "Introduction to VLSI System Design" which sold well: the first VLSI design textbook for non-technologists, which helped to demystify the planning of VLSI systems. This text increased the number of engineers capable of creating such chips. The authors intended "Introduction to VLSI Systems" to fill a gap in the literature and introduce all electrical engineering and computer science students to integrated system architecture. This textbook triggered a massive breakthrough in education. Mead & Conway VLSI design courses spread to many universities. Many Computer Science and Electrical Engineering professors throughout the world started teaching VLSI system design by using this textbook. Many of them also obtained a copy of Conway’s notes for her M.I.T. course in 1978, which included a collection of exercises.
(MPC) service for fabricating the students’ design exercise chips and the researcher's prototype chips at reasonable cost. The first run was at Conway’s 1978 VLSI course at M.I.T. A few weeks after completion of their design the students had the fabricated prototype available for testing. Conway's improved Xerox PARC MPC
VLSI implementation system and service was operated successfully for a dozen universities in late 1979. Conway's MPC technology was transferred to USC
-ISI
to become the foundation for the MOSIS
System, which has been used and evolved since 1981 as a national infrastructure for fast-turnaround prototyping of VLSI chip designs by universities and researchers.
In 1980 DARPA began DoD's new VLSI research program
to support extensions of this work, resulting in many university and industry researchers becoming involved in following up the Mead-Conway innovations. The Mead & Conway ideas rapidly spread around the world and many national Mead & Conway scenes have been organized, for instance the German multi-university E.I.S. project. The Mead & Conway revolution has also fostered the emerging Electronic Design Automation
(EDA) industry and other industries depending on EDA products.
Background
Early in the commercialization of integrated circuits, when chips had hundreds of transistors or less, microchip design was performed primarily by industry and co-located with manufacturing. Design knowledge was largely proprietary and the universities fell behind in their capability to design such systems. As predicted by Moore’s law the number of transistors per chip doubled every year, high circuit complexity led to a disjunction between device physics experts and design capability. For this reason Carver MeadCarver Mead
Carver Andress Mead is a US computer scientist. He currently holds the position of Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology , having taught there for over 40 years.Mead studied electrical engineering at Caltech, getting...
called throughout the 1970s for a separation of design from technology, in order to establish EDA
Electronic design automation
Electronic design automation is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as printed circuit boards and integrated circuits...
as its own discipline developing its own methodologies. The breakdown is that technologists know how to fabricate smaller and faster transistors, and designers know how to coordinate the cooperation of thousands or millions of transistors.
Textbook
Around 1980 when about up to 20,000 transistors could be fabricated on a single chip, Mead and Lynn ConwayLynn Conway
Lynn Conway is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, inventor, trans woman, and activist for the transgender community....
wrote "Introduction to VLSI System Design" which sold well: the first VLSI design textbook for non-technologists, which helped to demystify the planning of VLSI systems. This text increased the number of engineers capable of creating such chips. The authors intended "Introduction to VLSI Systems" to fill a gap in the literature and introduce all electrical engineering and computer science students to integrated system architecture. This textbook triggered a massive breakthrough in education. Mead & Conway VLSI design courses spread to many universities. Many Computer Science and Electrical Engineering professors throughout the world started teaching VLSI system design by using this textbook. Many of them also obtained a copy of Conway’s notes for her M.I.T. course in 1978, which included a collection of exercises.
Results
A milestone was the Multi Project ChipMulti Project Chip
Multi-Project Chip or Multi-Project Wafer services integrate onto microelectronics wafers a number of different integrated circuit designs from various teams including designs from private firms, students and researchers from universities. Because IC fabrication costs are extremely high, it makes...
(MPC) service for fabricating the students’ design exercise chips and the researcher's prototype chips at reasonable cost. The first run was at Conway’s 1978 VLSI course at M.I.T. A few weeks after completion of their design the students had the fabricated prototype available for testing. Conway's improved Xerox PARC MPC
Multi Project Chip
Multi-Project Chip or Multi-Project Wafer services integrate onto microelectronics wafers a number of different integrated circuit designs from various teams including designs from private firms, students and researchers from universities. Because IC fabrication costs are extremely high, it makes...
VLSI implementation system and service was operated successfully for a dozen universities in late 1979. Conway's MPC technology was transferred to USC
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
-ISI
Information Sciences Institute
The Information Sciences Institute is a research and development unit of the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering which focuses on computer and communications technology and information processing...
to become the foundation for the MOSIS
MOSIS
MOSIS is probably the oldest integrated circuit foundry service and one of the first Internet services other than supercomputing services and basic infrastructure such as E-mail or FTP....
System, which has been used and evolved since 1981 as a national infrastructure for fast-turnaround prototyping of VLSI chip designs by universities and researchers.
In 1980 DARPA began DoD's new VLSI research program
VLSI Project
DARPA's VLSI Project provided research funding to a wide variety of university-based teams in an effort to improve the state of the art in microprocessor design, then known as VLSI. Although little known, notably in comparison to their work on what became the internet, the VLSI Project is likely...
to support extensions of this work, resulting in many university and industry researchers becoming involved in following up the Mead-Conway innovations. The Mead & Conway ideas rapidly spread around the world and many national Mead & Conway scenes have been organized, for instance the German multi-university E.I.S. project. The Mead & Conway revolution has also fostered the emerging Electronic Design Automation
Electronic design automation
Electronic design automation is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as printed circuit boards and integrated circuits...
(EDA) industry and other industries depending on EDA products.