silicon chip

2 definitions found

silicon chip - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

  silicon chip
      n 1: electronic equipment consisting of a small crystal of a
           silicon semiconductor fabricated to carry out a number of
           electronic functions in an integrated circuit [syn: chip,
           microchip, micro chip, silicon chip, microprocessor chip
           ]

silicon chip - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  integrated circuit
  chip
  silicon chip
  
     <electronics> (IC, or "chip") A microelectronic
     semiconductor device consisting of many interconnected
     transistors and other components.  ICs are constructed
     ("fabricated") on a small rectangle (a "die") cut from a
     Silicon (or for special applications, Sapphire) wafer.  This
     is known as the "substrate".  Different areas of the substrate
     are "doped" with other elements to make them either "p-type"
     or "n-type" and polysilicon or aluminium tracks are etched in
     one to three layers deposited over the surface.  The die is
     then connected into a package using gold wires which are
     welded to "pads", usually found around the edge of the die.
  
     Integrated circuits can be classified into analogue, digital
     and hybrid (both analogue and digital on the same chip).
     Digital integrated circuits can contain anything from one to
     millions of logic gates - inverters, AND, OR, NAND
     and NOR gates, flip-flops, multiplexors etc. on a few
     square millimeters.  The small size of these circuits allows
     high speed, low power dissipation, and reduced manufacturing
     cost compared with board-level integration.
  
     The first integrated circuits contained only a few
     transistors.  Small Scale Integration (SSI) brought
     circuits containing transistors numbered in the tens.  Later,
     Medium Scale Integration (MSI) contained hundreds of
     transistors.  Further development lead to Large Scale
     Integration (LSI) (thousands), and VLSI (hundreds of
     thousands and beyond).  In 1986 the first one megabyte RAM
     was introduced which contained more than one million
     transistors.
  
     LSI circuits began to be produced in large quantities around
     1970 for computer main memories and pocket calculators.  For
     the first time it became possible to fabricate a CPU or even
     an entire microprocesor on a single integrated circuit.  The
     most extreme technique is wafer-scale integration which uses
     whole uncut wafers as components.
  
     [Where and when was the term "chip" introduced?]
  
     (1997-07-03)