VLSI

In the early years of the Department, Sidney Michaelson's research interest was primarily in stylometry, using statistical studies of the usage of words in literary texts to reslove issues of authorship and chronology. In the 1980s the development of integrated circuit technology spurred Sidney to return to his earlier interest in computer hardware. In 1981 he was Organising Chairman for a highly successful initial conference on Very Large Scale Integration, ‘VLSI 81’, held in Edinburgh. In 1982 he founded a new Working Group on VLSI for the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP); this became one of IFIP’s most active groups, regularly organising workshops and conferences.

At about the same time, other colleagues, led by John Gray, founded Lattice Logic Ltd, a company that pioneered silicon compilation. Later, in 1989, John founded Algotronix, a company that developed a Field Programmable Gate Array. In 1993 Algotronix was taken over by Xilinx, a USA-based company that was itself taken over by another American company, AMD, in 2022. Among those at Edinburgh who worked with Xilinx was Gordon Brebner, who later (in 2002) moved to work for Xilinx in California.

In the late 1990s several members of the Department contributed to the work of the Institute for System Level Integration (ISLI). ISLI was a collaborative venture between Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heriot Watt and Strathclyde Universities. It was created at the behest of Scottish Enterprise (a Government agency) in response to an inward investment by Cadence Design Systems of San Jose, California, a leading electronic design automation software and design services company. Based in Livingston, ISLI offered a one-year MSc in System Level Integration and an EngD programme. ISLI operated very successfully until a global recession in the semiconductor industry in the early 2000s led to its closure.

More information about the people involved in early VLSI research can be found at: