Introduction

Abstract

In 1965, Dr. Moore of Intel Corporation predicted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every 18 months, known as “Moore’s Law” [1.1]. Since then, through continual improvements of the manufacturing technologies, Moore’s Law has been successfully maintained until today. As an example in Fig. 1.1, the number of transistors on an Intel CPU (Central Processing Unit) chip increased from 2,250 in 1971 (4004) to 3.1 ×10⁶ in 1993 (Pentium); and now there are 55 ×10⁶ transistors on a latest Pentium 4 processor (3.06 GHz core frequency), introduced in November 2002 [1.2].