Integrated circuit

An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a compact assembly of electronic circuits formed from various electronic components, such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors, and their interconnections. These components are fabricated onto a thin, flat piece ("chip") of semiconductor material, most commonly silicon. Integrated circuits are integral to a wide variety of electronic devices (including computers, smartphones, and televisions) performing functions such as data processing, control, and storage. They have transformed the field of electronics by enabling device miniaturization, improving performance, and reducing cost. Compared to assemblies built from discrete components, integrated circuits are orders of magnitude smaller, faster, more energy-efficient, and less expensive, allowing for a very high transistor count. Its capability for mass production, its high reliability, and the standardized, modular approach of integrated circuit design facilitated rapid replacement of designs using discrete transistors. Today, ICs are present in virtually all electronic devices and have revolutionized modern technology. Products such as computer processors, microcontrollers, digital signal processors, and embedded processing chips in home appliances are foundational to contemporary society due to their small size, low cost, and versatility. Very-large-scale integration was made practical by technological advancements in semiconductor device fabrication. Since their origins in the 1960s, the size, speed, and capacity of chips have progressed enormously, driven by technical advances that fit more and more transistors on chips of the same size – a modern chip may have many billions of transistors in an area the size of a human fingernail. These advances, roughly following Moore's law, make the computer chips of today possess millions of times the capacity and thousands of times the speed of the computer chips of the early 1970s. ICs have three main advantages over circuits constructed out of discrete components: size, cost and performance. The size and...