What are Integrated Circuits (ICs)?

An integrated circuit is a miniature electronic device or component. Adopt a certain process to interconnect transistors, resistors, capacitors, inductors and other components and wiring required in a circuit, make it on a small or several small semiconductor wafers or dielectric substrates, and then package them in a tube case , To become a micro-structure with the required circuit functions; where all the components have been integrated into a whole, making electronic components a big step towards miniaturization, low power consumption, intelligence and high reliability. It is represented in the circuit by the letter "IC". The inventors of integrated circuits were Jack Kilby (germanium (Ge) -based integrated circuits) and Robert Neuss (silicon (Si) -based integrated circuits). Most applications in the semiconductor industry today are silicon-based integrated circuits.

Integrated circuit, English for Integrated Circuit, abbreviated as IC; as its name implies, it integrates a certain number of commonly used electronic components, such as resistors, capacitors, transistors, etc., and the connections between these components through semiconductor processes. Circuit.

Why are there integrated circuits? We know that there is a driving force behind any invention, and the driving force often comes from problems. So what were the problems before integrated circuits? Let's take a look at the world's first electronic computer, which was born in the United States in 1946. It is a behemoth that covers an area of 150 square meters and weighs 30 tons. The circuit inside uses 17,468 electron tubes, 7,200 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 500,000 lines with a power consumption of 150 kW ^[1]

Integrated circuit or

History of World Integrated Circuit Development

In 1947:

After the transistor was invented and mass-produced, various solid-state semiconductor components such as diodes and transistors were used in large numbers, replacing the functions and roles of vacuum tubes in circuits. By the mid-to-late 20th century, advances in semiconductor manufacturing technology made integrated circuits possible. Compared to the use of individual discrete electronic components in manually assembled circuits, integrated circuits can integrate a large number of microtransistors into a small chip, which is a huge improvement. The large-scale production capacity, reliability, and modular approach of circuit design ensure the rapid adoption of standardized ICs instead of designing discrete transistors.

ICs have two main advantages over discrete transistors: cost and performance. The low cost is because the chip prints all components as a unit through photolithography, instead of making only one transistor at a time. High performance is due to the fast switching of the components, which consumes less energy, because the components are small and close to each other. In 2006, the chip area ranged from a few square millimeters to 350 mm2, with one million transistors per mm2.

The first integrated circuit prototype was completed by Jack Kilby in 1958 and included a bipolar transistor, three resistors and a capacitor.

According to the number of microelectronic devices integrated on a chip, integrated circuits can be divided into the following categories:

Small scale integrated circuit

The full English name of SSI is Small Scale Integration, with less than 10 logic gates or less than 100 transistors.

2. Medium-sized integrated circuits

The full English name of MSI is Medium Scale Integration, with 11 ~ 100 logic gates or 101 ~ 1k transistors.

3. Large-scale integrated circuits

The full English name of LSI is Large Scale Integration, with 101 ~ 1k logic gates or 1,001 ~ 10k transistors.

4.VLSI

The full English name of VLSI is Very large scale integration, with 1,001 ~ 10k logic gates or 10,001 ~ 100k transistors.

5.Very large scale integrated circuits

The full English name of ULSI is Ultra Large Scale Integration, with 10,001 ~ 1M logic gates or 100,001 ~ 10M transistors.

The full English name of GLSI is Giga Scale Integration, with more than 1,000,001 logic gates or more than 10,000,001 transistors.

According to different processing signals, it can be divided into analog integrated circuits, digital integrated circuits, and mixed-signal integrated circuits with both analog and digital.

IC Development

The most advanced integrated circuits are the "cores" of microprocessors or multi-core processors, which can control everything from computers to mobile phones to digital microwave ovens. Memory and ASICs are examples of other integrated circuit families and are very important for the modern information society. Although the cost of designing and developing a complex integrated circuit is very high, the cost per IC is minimized when it is spread across the usually millions of products. The performance of the IC is very high, because the small size brings short paths, allowing low-power logic circuits to be used at fast switching speeds.

Over the years, ICs have continued to evolve to smaller form factors, enabling more circuits to be packaged per chip. This increases the capacity per unit area, which can reduce costs and increase functionality-see Moore's Law, the number of transistors in integrated circuits doubles every two years. In short, as the overall size shrinks, almost all indicators have improved-unit cost and switching power consumption have dropped, and speed has increased. However, ICs integrated with nano-scale devices are not without problems, mainly leakage current. As a result, the increase in speed and power consumption for the end user is very significant, and manufacturers are faced with the acute challenge of using better geometry. This process and the progress expected in the coming years are well described in the Semiconductor International Technology Roadmap (ITRS).

More and more circuits appear in the hands of designers as integrated chips, making the development of electronic circuits tend to be miniaturized and high-speed. More and more applications have been transformed from complex analog circuits into simple digital logic integrated circuits.

IC The popularity of integrated circuits

Only in the last half century of its development, integrated circuits became ubiquitous, and computers, mobile phones, and other digital appliances became an integral part of the structure of modern society. This is because modern computing, communication, manufacturing, and transportation systems, including the Internet, all depend on the existence of integrated circuits. Many scholars even believe that the digital revolution brought by integrated circuits is the most important event in human history.

IC Classification of integrated circuits IC

There are many classification methods for integrated circuits. According to whether the circuit is analog or digital, it can be divided into: analog integrated circuits, digital integrated circuits, and mixed-signal integrated circuits (analog and digital are on one chip).

Digital integrated circuits can contain anything, from thousands to millions of logic gates, flip-flops, multiplexers, and other circuits over a few square millimeters. The small size of these circuits enables higher speeds, lower power consumption, and reduced manufacturing costs compared to board-level integration. These digital ICs are represented by microprocessors, digital signal processors (DSPs), and single-chip microcomputers. They use binary in their work and process 1 and 0 signals.

Analog integrated circuits include, for example, sensors, power control circuits, and op amps that process analog signals. Complete amplification, filtering, demodulation, mixing functions, etc. By using expert-designed analog integrated circuits with good characteristics, the burden on the circuit designer is reduced, and everything need not be designed by the basic transistors.

ICs can integrate analog and digital circuits on a single chip to make devices such as analog-to-digital converters (A / D converters) and digital-to-analog converters (D / A converters). This circuit offers smaller size and lower cost, but care must be taken with signal collisions.