section_path: Generations/Medium-scale integration (MSI)
section_name: Medium-scale integration (MSI)
paragraph_text: Medium-scale integration (MSI)
  
  The next step in the development of integrated circuits introduced devices which contained hundreds of transistors on each chip, called "medium-scale integration" (MSI).
  
  MOSFET scaling technology made it possible to build high-density chips. By 1964, MOS chips had reached higher transistor density and lower manufacturing costs than bipolar chips.
  
  In 1964, Frank Wanlass demonstrated a single-chip 16-bit shift register he designed, with a then-incredible 120 MOS transistors on a single chip. The same year, General Microelectronics introduced the first commercial MOS integrated circuit chip, consisting of 120 p-channel MOS transistors. It was a 20-bit shift register, developed by Robert Norman and Frank Wanlass. MOS chips further increased in complexity at a rate predicted by Moore's law, leading to chips with hundreds of MOSFETs on a chip by the late 1960s.