The document discusses the history and development of integrated circuits (ICs). It describes how ICs allow many electronic components like transistors, diodes and resistors to be manufactured on a single chip. The concept was first proposed in 1952 but the first working IC was invented in 1958 by Jack Kilby. Robert Noyce then developed the idea of interconnecting components within the chip using a planar process. ICs have since advanced from integrating a few components to millions per chip, driven by the development of very large scale integration and ultra large scale integration.
The document discusses the history and development of integrated circuits (ICs). It describes how ICs allow many electronic components like transistors, diodes and resistors to be manufactured on a single chip. The concept was first proposed in 1952 but the first working IC was invented in 1958 by Jack Kilby. Robert Noyce then developed the idea of interconnecting components within the chip using a planar process. ICs have since advanced from integrating a few components to millions per chip, driven by the development of very large scale integration and ultra large scale integration.
The document discusses the history and development of integrated circuits (ICs). It describes how ICs allow many electronic components like transistors, diodes and resistors to be manufactured on a single chip. The concept was first proposed in 1952 but the first working IC was invented in 1958 by Jack Kilby. Robert Noyce then developed the idea of interconnecting components within the chip using a planar process. ICs have since advanced from integrating a few components to millions per chip, driven by the development of very large scale integration and ultra large scale integration.
The document discusses the history and development of integrated circuits (ICs). It describes how ICs allow many electronic components like transistors, diodes and resistors to be manufactured on a single chip. The concept was first proposed in 1952 but the first working IC was invented in 1958 by Jack Kilby. Robert Noyce then developed the idea of interconnecting components within the chip using a planar process. ICs have since advanced from integrating a few components to millions per chip, driven by the development of very large scale integration and ultra large scale integration.
A modern microelectronic system contains a large number of simple devices.
The power of computer comes from connecting more and more devices together. But the speed of a computer depends on the communication paths between the devices. The shorter of the paths, the faster the computer. This leads to the development of integrated circuitry (IC)
An IC chip is a collection of components connected to form a complete electronic circuit that is
manufactured on a single piece of semiconductor material. (Gao, Li, & Sammes, 2011)
The concept of the integrated circuit was first proposed by G.W.A. Dummer in 1952. He imagined a solid block containing layers of insulating, conducting and amplifying material with electrical functions being directly connected by cutting out areas on the various layers. At that time, he had no idea how this could be realized. Transistor technology was still beginning, the first germanium bipolar transistor working in 1947. A number of advances in materials and processing technology succeeded before the integration imagined by Dummer was achieved. (Harter, November 1991)
The first IC was invented in 1958 by Jack Kilby who was working for Texas Instruments. Kilby together with Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductors came up with a solution to the problem of large number of components with the development of the integrated circuit. They were awarded in 2000 a Nobel Prize in Physics for the contribution to its invention (Regan, March 2012). In the Kilby IC, the various semiconductor components (transistors, diodes, resistors or capacitors) were interconnected with so-called “flying wires”. He was connecting many germanium wafers of discrete components together by stacking each wafer on top of one another. Connections were made by running wires up the sides of the wafers. While Robert Noyce applied the idea of an IC in which the semiconductor components are interconnected within the chip using a planar fabrication process, thus eliminating the flying wires.
IC complexity has advanced from small-scale integration (SSI) in the 1960s, to medium scale (MSI), to larger scale integration (LSI), to very large-scale integration (VLSI), which characterizes devices containing 106 or components per chip, and to ultra large scale integrated (ULSI) circuit contains >108 components in a few mm size Si chip. (Gao, Li, & Sammes, 2011)
Evolution of ICs (Kal, January 2009)
1951 Discrete transistor
1960 small-scale integration (SSI) (<100 components per chip)
1966 medium scale (MSI) (>100 but <1000)
1969 large scale integration (LSI) (>1000 but <10,000)
1975 very large-scale integration (VLSI) (>10,000)
1980 106 or components per chip. Typical VLSI chip sixe in 1978: 3 x 5 mm2 area, 0.1 mm thick. Total 30,000 components
1998 ultra large scale integrated (ULSI) circuit (>10,000 components/mm2)
Modern integrated circuits are mainly made from Si semiconductor. The use of semiconductors led to third-generation computers which were smaller, faster and cheaper. And most of the spectacular benefits of modern electronics derive from integrated circuit electronics technology. (Carr, 1996)
References Carr, J. J. (1996). Linear Integrated Circuits. Newnes.
Gao, W., Li, Z., & Sammes, N. (2011). An Introduction to Electronic Materials for Engineers. World Scientific.
Harter, A. C. (November 1991). Three-Dimensional Integrated Circuits Layout. Cambridge University
Press.
Kal, S. (January 2009). Basic Electronics: Devices, Circuits and its Fundamentals. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.
Regan, G. (March 2012). A Brief History of Computing. Springer Science & Business Media.
