High-Performance Computer Graphics for VLSI Systems Design

Abstract

Since the invention of the planar transistor in 1959, the process of eletronic product design has been rapidly changing. Two decades ago, electronics engineers were designing discretes and resistor-transistor logic gates into products totaling perhaps a thousand transistors. A decade ago they were designing 4- and 8-bit microprocessors and 1K and 4K RAMs into systems with perhaps a million transistors. Engineers today are designing with 16- and 32-bit microcomputers and 64K and 256K RAMs. Today’s systems may contain 100 million transistors.