CE653 - Introduction

Complexity

CE-653 - Introduction and Fundamentals

VLSI is a statement about system complexity... Many fundamental ideas [pertaining to large system design] have yet to be discovered. The architecture and algorithms for highly concurrent systems is even less well developed.

- January 1979, Carver Mead’s Keynote Address to the First VLSI Conference


	Carver Mead was a bit more optimistic. He was a researcher--an academic. But he recognized the limits to our knowledge. 30 years have passed since then but the fact remains that most of today’s VLSI systems are understood in the terms of the same finite-state machines that were used for describing mainframes of the 1960s; the fact remains that highly concurrent systems are poorly understood, especially by circuit designers.