Mead & Conway revolution

The Mead & Conway revolution was a very-large-scale integration (VLSI) design revolution which resulted in a worldwide restructuring of academic education, and was paramount for the development of industries based on the application of microelectronics.

Immediately after the invention and commercialization of the integrated circuit (with 100 or fewer transistors in a chip), the design was co-located with integrated circuit technology. The circuits' design capability centered in the hands of industry, with universities falling behind in their capability to design computers and systems. But, as predicted by Moore’s law, the number of transistors which fit in a chip doubled every two years, meaning that because of the high circuit complexity, the device physics experts were not qualified enough to cope. For this reason, Carver Mead, who coined the term "Moore's law", called for a separation of design from technology throughout the 1970s in order to establish electronic design automation (EDA) as its own discipline developing its own methodologies.

In 1978-79, when approximately 20 000 transistors could be fabricated in a single chip, Carver Mead and Lynn Conway wrote the textbook Introduction to VLSI Systems () published in 1979 which became a bestseller. It was the first VLSI design textbook for non-technologists. The authors intended the book to fill a gap in the literature and introduce electrical engineering and computer science students to integrated system architecture. This textbook triggered a breakthrough in education. Mead & Conway VLSI design courses were created in many universities. Computer science and electrical engineering professors throughout the world started teaching VLSI system design and used this textbook. Many of them also obtained a copy of Lynn Conway's notes for her famous MIT course in 1978, which included a collection of exercises.

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