njit-etd2000-029 - New Jersey Institute of Technology

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Legend tells of a very rich and powerful Maharaja in Kashi, called Purushotama (1400
AD), who ruled most of India during its golden period. Known for his generous charities
and confidence in his ability at the game of chess, he put forth an open challenge to
everyone and promised to grant any wish to the victor. Finally, a wise Brahmin defeated
him and on being asked to name his reward, the Brahmin asked only to be given one grain
of rice for the first square of the chess board, two for the second, four for the third and so
on. Foolishly the king agreed to this seemingly trivial request. Anyone who has never tried
to calculate the numbers corresponding to the other squares will appreciate how the
repeated doubling rapidly produces huge numbers: the number of grains of rice for the
sixty-four square is a nineteen digit number, far in excess of the total number of grains of
rice in the world.
The phenomenal rise of the integrated circuit, better known as silicon chip, is due to a
similar exponential increase'. The origin of the integrated circuit can be traced back to the
developments in 1959 by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild
Semiconductor Corporation, laying the foundations for what was to follow. Two years
later a circuit comprising of four transistors was successfully fabricated on a single piece
of silicon, and over the next few years increasingly complex circuits were produced. In
1964 Gordon Moore, also at Fairchild, examined this trend and predicted that the number
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