Integrated Circuit

Integrated Circuit ( I.C )
      Another name for a chip, an integrated circuit (IC) is a small electronic device made out of a semiconductor material. The first integrated circuit was developed in the 1950s by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor.
    An integrated circuit (IC) is a thin chip consisting of at least two interconnected semiconductor devices, mainly transistors, as well as passive components like resistors.
The ROM-BIOS (Read Only Memory - Basic Input Output System) chip is a special chip held on your computer's system (mother) board. It contains software that is required to make your computer work with your operating system, for instance it is responsible for copying your operating system into RAM when you switch on your computer.
       Integrated circuits are used for a variety of devices, including video equipment, and automobiles. Integrated circuits are often classified by the number of transistors and other electronic components they contain:
SSI (small-scale integration):Up to 100 electronic components per chip MSI (medium-scale integration):From 100 to 3,000 electronic components per chip
LSI (large-scale integration):From 3,000 to 100,000 electronic components per chip
VLSI (very large-scale integration):From 100,000 to 1,000,000 electronic components per chip
ULSI (ultra large-scale integration):More than 1 million electronic components per chip
     
       Chips come in a variety of packages. The three most common IC packages are:
DIPs : Dual in-line packages are the traditional buglike chips that have anywhere from 8 to 40 legs,evenly divided in two rows.
PGAs : Pin-grid arrays are square chips in which the pins are arranged in concentric squares.
SIPs : Single in-line packages are chips that have just one row of legs in a straight line like a comb.
         In addition to these types of chips, there are also single in-line memory modules(SIMMs), which consist of up to nine chips packaged as a single unit.