Beginning in the mid 1980's, VLSI technology had begun to advance in two directions. Pushing the limit of integration, ULSI (Ultra Large Scale Integration) represents the frontier of the semiconductor processing technology in the campaign to conquer the submicron realm. The application of ULSI, however, is at present largely confined in the area of memory designs, and as such, its impact on traditional, microprocessor-based system design is modest. If advancement in this direction is merely a natural extrapolation from the previous integration generations, then the rise of ASIC...