Lynn Conway

Pioneer of the Mead and Conway revolution in VLSI design, Conway transformed the field of electronic chip design and automation.

Conway joined Xerox PARC in 1973, where she led the "LSI Systems" group under Bert Sutherland. Collaborating with Carver Mead of Caltech on VLSI design methodology, she co-authored Introduction to VLSI Systems, a groundbreaking work that became a standard textbook in chip design, used in over 100 universities by 1983. The book and early courses were the beginning of the Mead & Conway revolution in VLSI system design.

In 1978, Conway served as visiting associate professor of EECS at MIT, teaching a now famous VLSI design course based on a draft of the Mead–Conway text. The course validated the new design methods and textbook, and established the syllabus and instructor's guidebook used in later courses all around the world.

Among Conway's contributions were the invention of dimensionless, scalable design rules that greatly simplified chip design and design tools, and the 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 MOSIS system in 1981. From that point forward, MOSIS fabricated more than 50,000 circuit designs for commercial firms, government agencies, and research and educational institutions around the world.