Lynn Conway made her mark on microchip technology, pioneering scalable design rules for very large-scale integration (VLSI) chip design. With her VSLI innovations, Conway co-authored Introduction to VSLI Systems and even taught about her findings at MIT in 1978 while serving as a visiting associate professor.
Among Conway’s contributions were the invention of dimensionless, scalable design rules that greatly simplified chip design and design tools, and invention of a new form of internet-based infrastructure for rapid prototyping and short-run fabrication of large numbers of chip designs. The new infrastructure was institutionalized as the Metal Oxide Semiconductor Implementation Service (MOSIS) system in 1981. Two years into its success, Mead and Conway received Electronics Magazine’s annual award of achievement. Since then, MOSIS has fabricated more than 50,000 circuit designs for commercial firms, government agencies, and research and educational institutions around the world.