Integrated Circuit

Imagining we are living in a no electronic devices modern city that should be impossible but before the emerging of integrated circuit, this was hard to find any portable devices in world. A tiny electronic component has caused one of the most considerable changes of technological progress in human history. The integrated circuit known as microchip has launched a revolution comparable to the Industrial Revolution by miniaturization computer and the creating a digital era. Jack Kilby started this revolution in 1958 (Nobelprize.org, 2017). He succeeded in his idea which was to compose all the components on a semiconductor in order to make a compact circuit. The numbers of integrated circuit are far more than people in this world today. Although we can’t notice them in normal situation, they are tirelessly working at computers, PlayStation, IPhone. This essay will discuss the how integrated circuits improve the interconnection in circuits, the main advantages that made it a success, and the impact of integrated circuits in modern society.

The integrated circuit contributed the improvement of interconnection in circuits, and has become a logo of modern electronic devices. Before the invention of the microchip, the earlier circuit design involved large vacuum tubes, which control the computer’s function and store information by turning currents on or off (Nobelprize.org, 2017). This method always failed to transmit command under convoluted situation. Therefore, vacuum cubes were quickly replaced by effective transistors which invented in 1947. Unfortunately, while the circuit was growing more complex, the same problem raised again. To solve the problem of the interconnection and its size of modules, Robert Noyce built a semiconductor containing transistor, resistors and capacitors which was the fundamental of microchip in 1958 (Techwalla, 2017). It can have a high connectivity between components and the integrated interconnects between components. For this reason, microchip or integrated circuit is being catholically applied in electronic devices.

The integrated circuits had two main advantages over than traditional circuits including cost and performance which make it possible for it to succeed. The low cost due to the reason of integrated circuits used a technology - photolithography which printed all the components such as transistor, resistor, capacitor and diode rather than being constructed one transistor at one time. Discrete circuits used much more material than integrated circuits because it needed a long wire to connect different component. Comparatively high performance because of the Integrated circuits can switch quickly and consume little power that they had a small size and close packed components. Also, before the birth of microchip,