Solid state: VLSI with a vengeance: The Pentagon's very-high-speed integrated circuits project requires revolutionary advances in systems and IC technology

Discusses the Pentagon's very-high-speed integrated circuits project which requires revolutionary advances in systems and IC technology. The VHSIC program was initiated to develop VLSI signal processors with several hundred times higher speed and computing power than today's LSI devices. The planned processors must also consume less power and be smaller and more reliable. They are for use in military applications with no counterparts in commerce or industry-mainly real-time signal processors for weapons systems of the next decade. The goal of the program is pilot production in 1986 of processors containing 250000 gates, operating at clock speeds of at least 25 MHz, and performing several million to several billion operations per second. The gates would be fabricated by MOS or bipolar technology and have minimum dimensions of 0.5 to 0.8 μm. The required speed and circuit density would be obtained both by scaling down current LSI circuits-proportionately reducing such basic parameters as channel length, oxide thickness, and supply voltage-and by developing new types of system architecture and software.