Large scale integration (LSI) describes the density of early microprocessors and complex digital circuits that packed tens of thousands of transistors onto a single silicon chip. It marks the transition from simple logic blocks to complete systems like early calculators and computer processors. The term is mostly historic, having been superseded by very large scale integration (VLSI) as transistor counts climbed into the millions.
We studied large scale integration by looking at the architecture of the 8086 processor.
Also heard as
- LSI
Related terms
Very large scale integration
The process of creating complex integrated circuits by combining hundreds of thousands of transistors on a single chip.
Small-scale integration
An early generation of integrated circuit technology containing only a few logic gates per chip.
MSI
A historical classification for chips containing between 10 and 100 logic gates.
VLSI
Very large-scale integration is the process of creating an integrated circuit by combining thousands to millions of transistors onto a single chip.