Integrated Circuit

Jai Ganesh · Today 18:21:49

Integrated Circuit

Gist

An integrated circuit (IC), or microchip, is a tiny electronic device containing thousands to billions of interconnected transistors, resistors, and capacitors fabricated onto a single small piece of semiconductor material, usually silicon. This miniaturization allows for complex electronic functions, forming the backbone of modern electronics like smartphones, computers, and medical devices, replacing bulky, separate components.

The components are interconnected through a complex network of pathways etched onto the chip's surface. These pathways allow electrical signals to flow between the components, enabling the IC to perform specific functions, such as processing data, amplifying signals, or storing information.

Summary

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.[1] 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 cost is low because the chips, with all their components, are printed as a unit by photolithography rather than being constructed one transistor at a time. Furthermore, packaged ICs use much less material than discrete circuits. Performance is high because the IC's components switch quickly and consume comparatively little power because of their small size and proximity. The main disadvantage of ICs is the high initial cost of designing them and the enormous capital cost of factory construction. This high initial cost means ICs are only commercially viable when high production volumes are anticipated.

Details

An integrated circuit (IC) — commonly called a chip — is a compact, highly efficient semiconductor device that contains a multitude of interconnected electronic components such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors, all fabricated on a single piece of silicon. This revolutionary technology forms the backbone of modern electronics, enabling high-speed, miniaturized, and reliable devices found in everything from smartphones and computers to medical equipment and vehicles.

Before the invention of ICs, electronic systems relied on discrete components connected individually, resulting in bulky and unreliable systems. Integrated circuits enabled the miniaturization, increased performance, and cost-effectiveness that define today’s digital world.

What Do ICs Do?

You’re probably familiar with the little black boxes nestled neatly inside your favorite devices. With their diminutive size and unassuming characteristics, it can be hard to believe these vessels are actually the linchpin of most modern electronics. But without integrated chips, most technologies would not be possible, and we — as a technology-dependent society — would be helpless.

Integrated circuits are compact electronic chips made up of interconnected components that include resistors, transistors, and capacitors. Built on a single piece of semiconductor material, such as silicon, integrated circuits can contain collections of hundreds to billions of components — all working together to make our world go ‘round.

The uses of integrated circuits are vast: children’s toys, cars, computers, mobile phones, spaceships, subway trains, airplanes, video games, toothbrushes, and more. Basically, if it has a power switch, it likely owes its electronic life to an integrated circuit. An integrated circuit can function within each device as a microprocessor, amplifier, or memory.

Integrated circuits are created using photolithography, a process that uses ultraviolet light to print the components onto a single substrate all at once — similar to the way you can make many prints of a photograph from a single negative. The efficiency of printing all the IC’s components together means ICs can be produced more cheaply and reliably than using discrete components. Other benefits of ICs include:

* Extremely small size, so devices can be compact
* High reliability
* High-speed performance
* Low power requirement

Who Invented the Integrated Circuit?

The integrated circuit was independently invented by two pioneering engineers in the late 1950s: Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor.

Jack Kilby built the first working IC prototype in 1958 using germanium, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his contribution to technology.

Robert Noyce developed a practical method for mass-producing ICs using silicon and the planar process, which laid the foundation for the modern semiconductor industry and led to the founding of Intel.

Their combined innovations set the stage for the explosive growth of electronics and computing power that continues today.

Evolution of IC Manufacturing

Since their creation, integrated circuits have gone through several evolutions to make our devices ever smaller, faster, and cheaper. While the first generation of ICs consisted of only a few components on a single chip, each generation since has prompted exponential leaps in power and economy.

1950s: Integrated circuits were introduced with only a few transistors and diodes on one chip.
1960s: The introduction of bipolar junction transistors and small- and medium-scale integration made it possible for thousands of transistors to be connected on a single chip.
1970s: Large-scale integration and very large-scale integration (VLSI) allowed for chips with tens of thousands, then millions of components, enabling the development of the personal computer and advanced computing systems.
2000s: In the early 2000s, ultra-large-scale integration (ULSI) allowed billions of components to be integrated on one substrate.
Next: The 2.5D and 3D integrated circuit (3D-IC) technologies currently under development will create unparalleled flexibility, propelling another great leap in electronics advancement.

The first IC manufacturers were vertically integrated companies that did all the design and manufacturing steps themselves. This is still the case for some companies like Intel, Samsung, and memory chip manufacturers. But since the 1980s, the “fabless” business model has become the norm in the semiconductor industry.

A fabless IC company does not manufacture the chips they design. Instead, they contract this out to dedicated manufacturing companies that operate fabrication facilities (fabs) shared by many design companies. Industry leaders like Apple, AMD, and NVIDIA are examples of fabless IC design houses. Leading IC manufacturers today include TSMC, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries.

What are the Main Types of Integrated Circuits?

ICs can be classified into different types based on their complexity and purpose. Some common types of ICs include:

* Digital ICs: These are used in devices such as computers and microprocessors. Digital ICs can be used for memory, storing data, or logic. They are economical and easy to design for low-frequency applications.
* Analog ICs: Analog ICs are designed to process continuous signals in which the signal magnitude varies from zero to full supply voltage. These ICs are used to process analog signals such as sound or light. In comparison to digital ICs, they are made of fewer transistors but are more difficult to design. Analog ICs can be used in a wide range of applications, including amplifiers, filters, oscillators, voltage regulators, and power management circuits. They are commonly found in electronic devices such as audio equipment, radio frequency (RF) transceivers, communications, sensors, and medical instruments.
* Mixed-signal ICs: Combining both digital and analog circuits, mixed-signal ICs are used in areas where both types of processing are required, such as screen, sensor, and communications applications in mobile phones, cars, and portable electronics.
* Memory ICs: These ICs are used store data both temporarily or permanently. Examples of memory ICs include random access memory (RAM) and read-only memory (ROM). Memory ICs are among the largest ICs in terms of transistor count and require extremely high-capacity and fast simulation tools.
* Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC): ASICs are designed to perform a particular task efficiently. It is not a general-purpose IC that can be implemented in most applications but is instead a system-on-chip (SoC) customized to execute a targeted function.

What is the Difference Between an IC and a Microprocessor?

While all microprocessors are integrated circuits, not all ICs are microprocessors. Here’s how they differ:

* Integrated Circuit (IC): A broad term for any chip that contains interconnected electronic components. ICs can be as simple as a single logic gate or as complex as a full system-on-chip (SoC).
* Microprocessor: A specific type of digital IC designed to function as the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer or embedded device. Microprocessors execute instructions, perform arithmetic and logic operations, and manage data flow.
In essence, a microprocessor is a highly specialized IC that acts as the “brain” of a computer, while ICs as a category include a wide range of chips with diverse functions.

Additional Information

An integrated circuit (IC) is an assembly of electronic components, fabricated as a single unit, in which miniaturized active devices (e.g., transistors and diodes) and passive devices (e.g., capacitors and resistors) and their interconnections are built up on a thin substrate of semiconductor material (typically silicon). The resulting circuit is thus a small monolithic “chip,” which may be as small as a few square centimetres or only a few square millimetres. The individual circuit components are generally microscopic in size.

Integrated circuits have their origin in the invention of the transistor in 1947 by William B. Shockley and his team at the American Telephone and Telegraph Company’s Bell Laboratories. Shockley’s team (including John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain) found that, under the right circumstances, electrons would form a barrier at the surface of certain crystals, and they learned to control the flow of electricity through the crystal by manipulating this barrier. Controlling electron flow through a crystal allowed the team to create a device that could perform certain electrical operations, such as signal amplification, that were previously done by vacuum tubes. They named this device a transistor, from a combination of the words transfer and resistor. The study of methods of creating electronic devices using solid materials became known as solid-state electronics. Solid-state devices proved to be much sturdier, easier to work with, more reliable, much smaller, and less expensive than vacuum tubes. Using the same principles and materials, engineers soon learned to create other electrical components, such as resistors and capacitors. Now that electrical devices could be made so small, the largest part of a circuit was the awkward wiring between the devices.

In 1958 Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments, Inc., and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation independently thought of a way to reduce circuit size further. They laid very thin paths of metal (usually aluminum or copper) directly on the same piece of material as their devices. These small paths acted as wires. With this technique an entire circuit could be “integrated” on a single piece of solid material and an integrated circuit (IC) thus created. ICs can contain hundreds of thousands of individual transistors on a single piece of material the size of a pea. Working with that many vacuum tubes would have been unrealistically awkward and expensive. The invention of the integrated circuit made technologies of the Information Age feasible. ICs are now used extensively in all walks of life, from cars to toasters to amusement park rides.

Basic IC types:

Analog versus digital circuits

Analog, or linear, circuits typically use only a few components and are thus some of the simplest types of ICs. Generally, analog circuits are connected to devices that collect signals from the environment or send signals back to the environment. For example, a microphone converts fluctuating vocal sounds into an electrical signal of varying voltage. An analog circuit then modifies the signal in some useful way—such as amplifying it or filtering it of undesirable noise. Such a signal might then be fed back to a loudspeaker, which would reproduce the tones originally picked up by the microphone. Another typical use for an analog circuit is to control some device in response to continual changes in the environment. For example, a temperature sensor sends a varying signal to a thermostat, which can be programmed to turn an air conditioner, heater, or oven on and off once the signal has reached a certain value.

A digital circuit, on the other hand, is designed to accept only voltages of specific given values. A circuit that uses only two states is known as a binary circuit. Circuit design with binary quantities, “on” and “off” representing 1 and 0 (i.e., true and false), uses the logic of Boolean algebra. (Arithmetic is also performed in the binary number system employing Boolean algebra.) These basic elements are combined in the design of ICs for digital computers and associated devices to perform the desired functions.

Microprocessor circuits

Microprocessors are the most-complicated ICs. They are composed of billions of transistors that have been configured as thousands of individual digital circuits, each of which performs some specific logic function. A microprocessor is built entirely of these logic circuits synchronized to each other. Microprocessors typically contain the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer.

Just like a marching band, the circuits perform their logic function only on direction by the bandmaster. The bandmaster in a microprocessor, so to speak, is called the clock. The clock is a signal that quickly alternates between two logic states. Every time the clock changes state, every logic circuit in the microprocessor does something. Calculations can be made very quickly, depending on the speed (clock frequency) of the microprocessor.

Microprocessors contain some circuits, known as registers, that store information. Registers are predetermined memory locations. Each processor has many different types of registers. Permanent registers are used to store the preprogrammed instructions required for various operations (such as addition and multiplication). Temporary registers store numbers that are to be operated on and also the result. Other examples of registers include the program counter (also called the instruction pointer), which contains the address in memory of the next instruction; the stack pointer (also called the stack register), which contains the address of the last instruction put into an area of memory called the stack; and the memory address register, which contains the address of where the data to be worked on is located or where the data that has been processed will be stored.

Microprocessors can perform billions of operations per second on data. In addition to computers, microprocessors are common in video game systems, televisions, cameras, and automobiles.

Memory circuits

Microprocessors typically have to store more data than can be held in a few registers. This additional information is relocated to special memory circuits. Memory is composed of dense arrays of parallel circuits that use their voltage states to store information. Memory also stores the temporary sequence of instructions, or program, for the microprocessor.

Manufacturers continually strive to reduce the size of memory circuits—to increase capability without increasing space. In addition, smaller components typically use less power, operate more efficiently, and cost less to manufacture.

Digital signal processors

A signal is an analog waveform—anything in the environment that can be captured electronically. A digital signal is an analog waveform that has been converted into a series of binary numbers for quick manipulation. As the name implies, a digital signal processor (DSP) processes signals digitally, as patterns of 1s and 0s. For instance, using an analog-to-digital converter, commonly called an A-to-D or A/D converter, a recording of someone’s voice can be converted into digital 1s and 0s. The digital representation of the voice can then be modified by a DSP using complex mathematical formulas. For example, the DSP algorithm in the circuit may be configured to recognize gaps between spoken words as background noise and digitally remove ambient noise from the waveform. Finally, the processed signal can be converted back (by a D/A converter) into an analog signal for listening. Digital processing can filter out background noise so fast that there is no discernible delay and the signal appears to be heard in “real time.” For instance, such processing enables “live” television broadcasts to focus on a quarterback’s signals in an American gridiron football game.

DSPs are also used to produce digital effects on live television. For example, the yellow marker lines displayed during the football game are not really on the field; a DSP adds the lines after the cameras shoot the picture but before it is broadcast. Similarly, some of the advertisements seen on stadium fences and billboards during televised sporting events are not really there.

Application-specific ICs

An application-specific IC (ASIC) can be either a digital or an analog circuit. As their name implies, ASICs are not reconfigurable; they perform only one specific function. For example, a speed controller IC for a remote control car is hard-wired to do one job and could never become a microprocessor. An ASIC does not contain any ability to follow alternate instructions.

Radio-frequency ICs

Radio-frequency ICs (RFICs) are widely used in mobile phones and wireless devices. RFICs are analog circuits that usually run in the frequency range of 3 kHz to 2.4 GHz (3,000 hertz to 2.4 billion hertz), circuits that would work at about 1 THz (1 trillion hertz) being in development. They are usually thought of as ASICs even though some may be configurable for several similar applications.

Most semiconductor circuits that operate above 500 MHz (500 million hertz) cause the electronic components and their connecting paths to interfere with each other in unusual ways. Engineers must use special design techniques to deal with the physics of high-frequency microelectronic interactions.

Monolithic microwave ICs

A special type of RFIC is known as a monolithic microwave IC (MMIC; also called microwave monolithic IC). These circuits usually run in the 2- to 100-GHz range, or microwave frequencies, and are used in radar systems, in satellite communications, and as power amplifiers for cellular telephones.

Just as sound travels faster through water than through air, electron velocity is different through each type of semiconductor material. Silicon offers too much resistance for microwave-frequency circuits, and so the compound GaAs is often used for MMICs. Unfortunately, GaAs is mechanically much less sound than silicon. It breaks easily, so GaAs wafers are usually much more expensive to build than silicon wafers.

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Integrated Circuit

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