engineering

Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program

Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program rather than just read about it. In short: The Very High Speed Integrated Circuit (VHSIC) Program was a United States Department of Defense (DOD) research program that ran from 1980 to 1990. Its mission was to research and develop very high-speed integrated circuits for the United States Armed Forces.

Key takeaways

Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Very High Speed Integrated Circuit (VHSIC) Program was a United States Department of Defense (DOD) research program that ran from 1980 to 1990. Its mission was to research and develop very high-speed integrated circuits for the United States Armed Forces.

Program VHSIC was launched in 1980 as a joint tri-service (Army/Navy/Air Force) program. The program led to advances in integrated circuit materials, lithography, packaging, testing, and algorithms, and created numerous computer-aided design (CAD) tools. A well-known part of the program's contribution is VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language), a hardware description language (HDL). The program also redirected the military's interest in GaAs ICs back toward the commercial mainstream of CMOS circuits. More than $1 billion in total was spent on the VHSIC program for silicon integrated circuit technology development. A DARPA project which ran concurrently, the VLSI Project, having begun two years earlier in 1978, contributed BSD Unix, the RISC processor, the MOSIS research design fab, and greatly furthered the Mead and Conway revolution in VLSI design automation. By contrast, the VHSIC program was comparatively less cost-effective for the funds invested over a contemporaneous time frame, though the projects had different final objectives and are not entirely comparable for that reason. By the time the program ended in 1990, commercial processors were far outperforming what the Pentagon's program had produced; however, it did manage to subsidize US semiconductor equipment manufacturing, stimulating an industry that shipped much of its product abroad (mainly to Asia).

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program

In research: Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Integrated circuits, Science and technology in the United States, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program in simple terms?

Why does Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program.