ALL meanings of integrated circuit
in·te·grat·ed cir·cuit
I i - noun integrated circuit a circuit of transistors, resistors, and capacitors constructed on a single semiconductor wafer or chip, in which the components are interconnected to perform a given function. Abbreviation: IC. 1
- noun Definition of integrated circuit in Technology (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. 1
- countable noun integrated circuit An integrated circuit is a very small electronic circuit printed on a single silicon chip. 0
- noun integrated circuit a very small electronic circuit consisting of an assembly of elements made from a chip of semiconducting material, such as crystalline silicon 0
- noun integrated circuit an electronic circuit containing many interconnected amplifying devices and circuit elements formed on a single body, or chip, of semiconductor material 0
- noun integrated circuit An integrated circuit is a device that contains its own transistors, resistors, and diodes within itself. 0
- noun integrated circuit (electronics) a thin chip consisting of at least two interconnected semiconductor devices, mainly transistors. 0