wafer scale integration - technical definition

The evolution in semiconductor technology that builds a gigantic circuit on an entire wafer. Just as the integrated circuit eliminated cutting apart thousands of transistors from the wafer only to wire them back again on circuit boards, wafer scale integration eliminates cutting apart the chips. All the circuits for an entire computer are designed onto one super-sized chip.

Thus far, wafer scale integration has not come to fruition (see Trilogy); however, chip packaging such as the multichip module (MCM) and multichip package (MCP), in which several chips are connected closely together in a single housing, has become widely used.