Computer Hardware: Microchips and Integrated Circuits

Study Notes

A microchip is a set of electronic circuits on a small flat piece of silicon.
Transistors on the chip act as miniature electrical switches that can turn a current on or off.

Silicon is the material of choice in the chip industry due to its semiconductor properties.
Silicon can be found everywhere, made from sand, and is the second most abundant element on earth after oxygen.
Silicon wafers are made using silica sand, melted and cast into a large cylinder called an ingot, then sliced into thin wafers.

A microchip can contain billions of transistors, requiring extremely small features.
Chip features are measured in nanometers, with the most advanced microchips containing features just a few dozen nanometers in size.
Extreme Ultraviolet Technology enables the reduction of feature sizes even further.

Microchips can be categorized by functionality and type of integrated circuitry.
In terms of circuitry, a chip can be analog, digital, or mixed signal.
Analog chips process continuous signals, while digital chips process binary signals.

There are four main categories of microchips: Logic chips, Memory chips, application-specific integrated chips (ASICs), and system-on-a-chip devices (SoCs).
Logic chips, such as CPUs and GPUs, process information to complete tasks.
Memory chips, including volatile and non-volatile types, store information.
ASICs are simple single-purpose chips used for repetitive processing tasks.
SoCs are integrator chips that combine multiple chips and circuits in a single chip.