We dedicate tonight’s SudoRoom hardware hack night to the educator, inventor, and mentor Lynn Conway. She was passionate and resilient, rebuilding her career after getting fired from IBM for her transition, starting from the bottom as a contractor before going on to the famous research labs of Xerox PARC and then inventing a design methodology VSLI for microchipsthat revolutionized the computer industry. A brilliant professor, she inspired hundreds of students at the University of Michigan.
“My field would not exist without Lynn Conway. Chips used to be designed by drawing them with paper and pencil like an architect’s blueprints in the pre-digital era. Conway’s work developed algorithms that enabled our field to use software to arrange millions, and later billions, of transistors on a chip.”
VLSI Design
From Sparkfun Electronics:
“VLSI stands for Very Large Scale Integration. VLSI design refers to the process of designing integrated circuits (ICs) that contain millions or even billions of MOS transistors on a single chip. In the 1970s, MOS IC chips were starting to be widely used, and that’s when VSLI began, enabling complex telecommunication and semiconductor technology. The VSLI devices you’re probably familiar with are the microprocessor and the memory chip. Before VSLI was used, ICs were much more limited in their functionality, but VSLI allowed designers to add many capabilities all onto one chip.”
Read More about Lynn Conway
- Sparkfun profile – Lynn Conway and the Chip Design Revolution