The system/semiconductor interface with complex integrated circuits

Batch-fabrication techniques in thin film, cryogenic and semiconductor technologies have been recognized for some time as potentially having a dramatic impact in computing systems, but the problem of how to translate batch-fabrication technology to advanced systems has been brought home by the recent flurry of activity in high complexity integrated circuits. In the classic tradition of keeping all existing computers obsolete, the emergence of orders of magnitude increase in device complexity comes just as the earliest conventional integrated circuit computers are available.