A NARRATIVE HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF MOSIS SOFTWARE

This article explores the major software systems used by MOSIS since i ts inception in 1980, developed by the author. The MOSIS project (Meta l Oxide Silicon Implementation System) has served the nation by turnin g VLSI (microchip) designs, submitted over email, into fully packaged chips, sent back to the user via US mail. Before MOSIS, chip designers were faced with a prohibitive fabrication expense, and the daunting t asks of augmenting their designs with various tedious geometries and c oordinating the various vendors ranging from mask making for the fabri cation of silicon to packaging. The major innovation has been the ''sh aring of silicon''. The various ''packers'' that implement silicon sha ring are explored, as well as the other requisite software. (C) 1998 E lsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.