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2026-04-19T12:36:49Z

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{{Short description|1980s U.S. government research program}}
{{distinguish|Very Large Scale Integration}}
The '''Very High Speed Integrated Circuit''' ('''VHSIC''') '''Program''' was a [[United States Department of Defense]] (DOD) research program that ran from 1980 to 1990.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Alic |first1=John A. |last2=Brooks |first2=Harvey |last3=Branscomb |first3=Lewis M. |title=Beyond Spinoff: Military and Commercial Technologies in a Changing World |date=1992 |publisher=Harvard Business School Press |pages=269–270}}</ref> Its mission was to research and develop very high-speed [[integrated circuit]]s for the [[United States Armed Forces]].

==Program==
VHSIC was launched in 1980 as a joint tri-service ([[United States Army|Army]]/[[United States Navy|Navy]]/[[United States Air Force|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.<ref>{{Cite book| title = Advanced Signal Processing | author = David J. Creasey | publisher = IEE Telecommunications Series | year = 1985 | isbn = 0-86341-037-5 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=iszN4Ohe1b0C&q=VHSIC&pg=PA134 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book| title = Government Policy Towards Industry in the United States and Japan | author = John B. Shoven | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 1988 | isbn = 0-521-33325-3 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=hBpWgC4hcAcC&q=VHSIC&pg=PA346 }}</ref>

More than $1 billion in total was spent for the VHSIC program for silicon integrated circuit technology development.<ref>U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, [https://books.google.com/books?id=cs0g5VZndIcC&q=vhsic&pg=PA21 Microelectronics Research and Development – A Background Paper], OTA-B P-C IT-40, pp. 21–22 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office, March 1986).</ref>

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).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bryen |first=Stephen |date=2022-08-25 |title=Russia’s long-time chips failure coming home to roost |url=https://asiatimes.com/2022/08/russias-chips-failure-coming-home-to-roost/ |access-date=2023-05-22 |website=Asia Times |language=en-US}}</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Integrated circuits]]
[[Category:Science and technology in the United States]]

Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program - Revision history

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