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The Computer Chip

A computer chip is a small electronic circuit, also known as an integrated circuit, which is one of the basic components of most kinds of electronic devices, especially computers. Computer chips are small and are made of semiconductors that is usually composed of silicon, on which several tiny components including transistors are embedded and used to transmit electronic data signals. They became popular in the latter half of the 20th century because of their small size, low cost, high performance and ease to produce. The modern computer chip saw its beginning in the 1950s through two separate researchers who were not working together, but developed similar chips. The first was developed at Texas Instruments by Jack Kilby in 1958, and the second was developed at Fairchild Semiconductor by Robert Noyce in 1958. These first computer chips used relatively few transistors, usually around ten, and were known as small-scale integration chips. As time went on through the century, the amount of transistors that could be attached to the computer chip increased, as did their power, with the development of medium-scale and large-scale integration computer chips. The latter could contain thousands of tiny transistors and led to the first computer microprocessors. There are several basic classifications of computer chips, including analog, digital and mixed signal varieties. These different classifications of computer chips determine how they transmit signals and handle power. Their size and efficiency are also dependent upon their classification, and the digital computer chip is the smallest, most efficient, most powerful and most widely used, transmitting data signals as a combination of ones and zeros. Today, large-scale integration chips can actually contain millions of transistors, which is why computers have become smaller and more powerful than ever. Not only this, but computer chips are used in just about every electronic application including home appliances, cell phones, transportation and just about every aspect of modern living. It has been posited that the invention of the computer chip has been one of the most important events in human history. The future of the computer chip will include smaller, faster and even more powerful integrated capable of doing amazing things, even by todays standards.

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The Microprocessor
The computer you are using to read this file uses a microprocessor to do its work. The microprocessor is the heart of any normal computer, whether it is a desktop machine, a server or a laptop. The microprocessor you are using might be a Pentium, a K6, a PowerPC, a Sparc or any of the many other brands and types of microprocessors, but they all do approximately the same thing in approximately the same way. A microprocessor -- also known as a CPU or central processing unit -- is a complete computation engine that is fabricated on a single chip. The first microprocessor was the Intel 4004, introduced in 1971. The 4004 was not very powerful -- all it could do was add and subtract, and it could only do that 4 bits at a time. But it was amazing that everything was on one chip. Prior to the 4004, engineers built computers either from collections of chips or from discrete components (transistors wired one at a time). The 4004 powered one of the first portable electronic calculators. If you have ever wondered what the microprocessor in your computer is doing, or if you have ever wondered about the differences between types of microprocessors, then read on. In this article, you will learn how fairly simple digital logic techniques allow a computer to do its job, whether its playing a game or spell checking a document! A chip is also called an integrated circuit. Generally it is a small, thin piece of silicon onto which the transistors making up the microprocessor have been etched. A chip might be as large as an inch on a side and can contain tens of millions of transistors. Simpler processors might consist of a few thousand transistors etched onto a chip just a few millimeters square.