VLSI stands for Very Large Scale Integration which refers to the trend of large scale integration of circuits into silicon chips. A typical example is the cellphone. The modern trend of shrinking transistor sizes, allowing engineers to fit more and more transistors into the same area of silicon, has pushed the integration of more and more functions of cellphone circuitry into a single silicon die. This enabled the modern cellphone to mature into a powerful tool that shrank from the size of a large brick-sized unit to a device small enough to comfortably carry in a pocket or purse, with a video camera, touchscreen, and other advanced features.
This course will cover the fundamentals of a typical CMOS fabrication process, MOSFET layout, inverters, memory, latchup issues, logic types (ie. domino, sequential, combinational etc).
