The history of this book begins way back in 1982. At that time a
research proposal was filed with the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental
Research on Matter concerning research to model defects in the layer
structure of integrated circuits. It was projected that the results may
be useful for yield estimates, fault statistics and for the design of
fault tolerant structures. The reviewers were not in favor of this
proposal and it disappeared in the drawers. Shortly afterwards some
microelectronics industries realized that their survival may depend on a
better integration between technology-and design-laboratories. For years
the "silicon foundry" concept had suggested a fairly rigorous separation
between the two areas. The expectation was that many small design
companies would share the investment into the extremely costful Silicon
fabrication plants while designing large lots of application-specific
integrated circuits (ASIC's). Those fabrication plants would be
concentrated with only a few market leaders.