摘要: The era of low power microelectronics began with the invention transistor in late 1940's and came age integrated circuit 1950's. Historically, most demanding applications have been battery operated products such as wrist watches, hearing aids, implantable cardiac pacemakers, pocket calculators, pagers, cellular telephones prospectively hand-held multi-media terminal However, early 1990's rapidly evolved from a substantial tributary to mainstream microelectronics. principal reasons for this transformation were increasing packing density transistors clock frequencies CMOS microchips pushing heat removal distribution forefront problems confronting advance distinctive thesis discussion is that future opportunities gigascale integration (GSI) will be governed by hierarchy theoretical practical limits whose levels can codified as: (1) fundamental, (2) material, (3) device, (4) circuit, (5) system. >