What is Integrated Circuit (IC) Its Function

What is IC (Integrated Circuit), its functions and types.

If you are a student of electronics, then you must have heard about Integrated Circuit or IC. It is also referred to by other names such as “Chip” and “Microchip”. In this post what is IC? What is the function of IC in electronic devices such as mobile phones, laptops, refrigerators, computers, TVs and all other electrical and electronic devices? They will know.

Topics

• What is Integrated Circuit? (What is IC)
• How the invention of the IC changed computer design
• Generation of IC Chip
• Types of Integrated Circuit (IC)
• Analog ICs
• Digital ICs
• Mixed Single ICs
• Features of IC
• in short

What is Integrated Circuit(What is IC)

IC or Integrated Circuit is a small chip, which is made of semiconductor material usually silicon. In this small chip, many electronic components such as transistors, capacitors, diodes and resistors are interconnected with the help of a conducting wire.

The development of modern era electronic devices has been possible only due to the invention of Integrated Circuit (IC). Have you heard about the ENIAC computer, it was used in the 1940s. Its size was huge. It used to come in a 50 feet long room and it weighed about 30 tons.

Older electronic devices were larger in size because they used common circuits for their switching components such as vacuum tubes and transistors, rather than the integrated circuits used today. These circuits are for single component only.

Whereas in IC thousands to millions of small transistors, registers and capacitors are fabricated in a single chip. The integration of many electronic components into a single unit helped reduce the size of electronic components.

Key Points related to Integrated Circuit (IC):

• The IC can act as an amplifier, oscillator, timer, microprocessor and even a computer memory.
• It is a small monolithic chip, the size of which is a few square centimeters or a few square millimeters.
• In 1959, Robert Noyce manufactured the first IC chip at Fairchild Semiconductor International Company.
• The small size, light weight and low power consumption of IC chip have enabled engineers to manufacture a variety of microelectronic devices.
• These circuits are used for different purposes in all small and big electronic devices. In the circuit board (PCB) present inside your TV, phone or radio, you will see many small black colored chips in the shape of a square, these are all ICs.

How the invention of the IC changed computer design

Just now we told you about the ENIAC computer and its size. It was about 100 times bigger than a modern computer. But the functionality of ENIAC is nothing compared to today’s computer. So if we look at the history of the computer, since then there has been a continuous decrease in its design, while its functionality has been continuously increasing.

So all this has been possible only after the advent of integrated circuits. Because the electronic components used in old computers were very large in size. But since 1958, when ICs started being used in computers, both the size and cost of computers have decreased.

The advent of microchip technology not only changed the design of computers but also fueled the entire electronics industry. Apart from this, it became possible to manufacture mobile phones, TVs, digital watches and many such electronic devices.

The purpose behind creating the integrated circuit was to establish a connection between all the electronic components of the computer and bring them into a single circuit. Although initially the integrated circuit was not as efficient as it is today, it has been continuously improved over time. For this reason, we were also able to manufacture microelectronic gadgets.

Generation of IC Chip

The early IC chips did not have thousands or millions of electronic components integrated into them compared to today. Rather, only a few transistors were integrated in the first integrated circuit. But as metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) technology progressed, the number of electronic components that could be integrated into a single chip also increased rapidly. Let’s take a look at the journey one by one from the inception of ICs till now.

Small-Scale Integration (SSI)

The early integrated circuits had only a few transistors, so it was called small-scale integration. Less than 100 transistors and only a few logic gates were integrated into these ICs. For example, early linear ICs such as the Plessey SL201 or Philips TAA320 had some two transistors. These circuits played an important role in the initial aerospace projects.

Medium-Scale Integration (MSI)

By the 1960s, there was a major change in the Integrated Circuit. Now hundreds of transistors could be integrated into each chip. It was named Medium-Scale Integration. With the development of this type of IC, the size of the circuit board could be reduced.

Since many electronic components were integrated into a single chip, the task of assembling components separately was reduced. All this was possible due to MOSFET scaling technology which played a key role in developing high density chips.

Large-Scale Integration (LSI)

Many thousands of electronic components and over 100 gates could be integrated into MOS chips by the 1970s, with the aim of increasing the efficiency of the IC and reducing its cost. This integration was named Large-Scale Integration.

Continually increasing the number of electronic components that could be embedded in a single silicone wafer (IC) led to the creation of complex circuits such as the microprocessor.

Very-Large Scale Integration (VLSI)

In the future, the number of electronic components integrated into a single chip continued to grow, eventually reaching hundreds of billions of components per chip. The biggest advantage with the development of the VLSI circuit was that now the entire computing system could be converted into a single chip.

Such a complete computing system is called System-on-Chip (SoC). After this, in 1986, the first 1 megabit of RAM (meaning bit and byte in memory) was introduced, in which more than one million transistors were integrated. Apart from this, VLSI technology is widely used in making microchip processors.

Ultra-Large Scale Integration (ULSI)

ULSI technology was developed to create more complex systems. Under this, billions of transistors and hundreds of logic gates were embedded in a single microchip. The development of the ULSI circuit helped to build a better computer processor microchip.

Types of Integrated Circuit (IC)

ICs are classified into different categories on the basis of various parameters. But its main three types are as follows:

Analog ICs

In this type of IC, the input and output signals operate in a continuous range. Analog or Linear IC is the simplest type of circuit. Because only a few components are used in these circuits. For example, a microphone that converts sound waves into electrical energy in a nutshell, into an audio signal.

Typically, analog ICs are connected to devices that take signals from the environment or send signals back to the environment. Audio frequency amplifier and radio frequency amplifier are also good examples.

Digital ICs

These ICs operate at two defined levels instead of operating in all dimensions of the electric signal. This circuit is constructed using several digital gates, multiplexers, flip flops and other electronic components. The circuit which defines the signal in two states is called binary circuit.

These two states of electric signal are ‘0’ and ‘1’. In general, in digital circuits, 0 is considered as ‘on’ and 1 is considered as ‘off’. Digital ICs are used for logical operations and digital calculations. For example microprocessors and computer networks.

Mixed Single ICs

In these circuits both digital and analog ICs are combined into a single chip. It acts as a digital to analog converter (D/A converter) and analog to digital converter (A/C converter) and as a clock/timing IC.

Features of IC

Due to the many features of Integrated Circuit, it was an important invention in the field of electronics. Let us know what are its main features:

1. Many times smaller in size than the old circuit. Its various electronic components are integrated into a single chip.
2. Due to the small size of the circuit, the weight is also very light.
3. By combining hundreds of identical chips into a small semiconductor wafer, the cost per chip is reduced.
4. Absence of parasitic capacitance effect results in increase in operating speed.
5. These chips can be easily replaced, but they cannot be repaired if they are damaged.
6. Due to the small size of the Integrated Circuit, they consume less power.
7. The quality of IC chips is better, as there are no soldered joints in it.
8. These chips are suitable for small signal operation as there is no possibility of straight electric pickup.

In short

If different built-in electronic components such as transistor, capacitor, diode and register are joined together using a wire or a printed circuit board to form a circuit, then we call it a common circuit or discrete circuit.

But this circuit has many disadvantages, for example the number of components used in a large electronic circuit is more, due to which they take up a lot of space by embedding each component in a separate circuit. This is the reason why old electronic devices were very large in size.

Now because we can contain many thousands of components in a small chip. This is the reason that after the use of ICs in electronic devices, their size declined several hundred times. Apart from this, their processing capacity also increased thousands of times.

So hopefully, what is this post IC? From this you must have come to know about Integrated Circuit. If you have any question or suggestion related to the post, then please do tell in the comment. If you found this post informative then do not forget to share it with your friends.

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