Economical importance of the maximum chip area

In recent years, coupled with the lower voltages, lower power and current consumption and higher speeds brought about by miniaturization, VLSI has been experiencing radical changes in technology such as an increase in scale, higher integration and an increase in the number and complexity of functions. In spite of these technological changes, reduction of manufacturing costs is still a major task at the VLSI manufacturing site. This paper will study the maximum limit of the chip area enabling the manufacture of cheap VLSI and will show that when developing and manufacturing devices having a chip area that exceeds this limit it is more advantageous to use two-chip, three-chip, or multi-chip devices