In electronics Electronics is the branch of science and technology which makes use of the controlled motion of electrons through different media and vacuum. The ability to control electron flow is usually applied to information handling or device control. Electronics is distinct from electrical science and technology, which deals with the generation,, an integrated circuit (also known as IC, microcircuit, microchip, silicon chip, or chip) is a miniaturized electronic circuit An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electrical current can flow. The combination of components and wires allows various simple and complex operations to be performed: signals can be amplified, (consisting mainly of semiconductor devices Semiconductor devices are electronic components that exploit the electronic properties of semiconductor materials, principally silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide. Semiconductor devices have replaced thermionic devices in most applications. They use electronic conduction in the solid state as opposed to the gaseous state or thermionic, as well as passive components Passivity is a property of engineering systems, most commonly used in electronic engineering and control systems. A passive component, depending on field, may be either a component that consumes energy, or a component that is incapable of power gain. A component that is not passive is called an active component. An electronic circuit consisting) that has been manufactured in the surface of a thin substrate A wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor material, such as a silicon crystal, used in the fabrication of integrated circuits and other microdevices. The wafer serves as the substrate for microelectronic devices built in and over the wafer and undergoes many microfabrication process steps such as doping or ion implantation, etching, deposition of of semiconductor A semiconductor is a material that has an electrical conductivity due to flowing electrons which is intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means roughly in the range 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter. Devices made from semiconductor materials are the foundation of modern electronics, including radio, material. Integrated circuits are used in almost all electronic equipment in use today and have revolutionized the world of electronics.

A hybrid integrated circuit A hybrid integrated circuit, HIC, hybrid microcircuit, or simply hybrid is a miniaturized electronic circuit constructed of individual devices, such as semiconductor devices and passive components (e.g. resistors, inductors, transformers, and capacitors), bonded to a substrate or printed circuit board (PCB). Hybrid circuits are often encapsulated is a miniaturized electronic circuit constructed of individual semiconductor devices, as well as passive components, bonded to a substrate or circuit board.

Contents

Introduction

Synthetic detail of an integrated circuit through four layers of planarized copper interconnect, down to the polysilicon (pink), wells (greyish), and substrate (green).

Integrated circuits were made possible by experimental discoveries which showed that semiconductor devices Semiconductor devices are electronic components that exploit the electronic properties of semiconductor materials, principally silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide. Semiconductor devices have replaced thermionic devices in most applications. They use electronic conduction in the solid state as opposed to the gaseous state or thermionic could perform the functions of vacuum tubes In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve (elsewhere, especially in Britain) is a device used to amplify, switch, otherwise modify, or create an electrical signal by controlling the movement of electrons in a low-pressure space. Some special function vacuum tubes are filled with low-pressure gas: these are so-called soft, and by mid-20th-century technology advancements in semiconductor device fabrication Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to create the integrated circuits that are present in everyday electrical and electronic devices. It is a multiple-step sequence of photographic and chemical processing steps during which electronic circuits are gradually created on a wafer made of pure semiconducting material. Silicon is the. The integration of large numbers of tiny transistors A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals. It is made of a solid piece of semiconductor material, with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current flowing through another pair of terminals into a small chip was an enormous improvement over the manual assembly of circuits using electronic components An electronic component is a basic electronic element usually packaged in a discrete form with two or more connecting leads or metallic pads. Components are intended to be connected together, usually by soldering to a printed circuit board, to create an electronic circuit with a particular function . Components may be packaged singly (resistor,. The integrated circuit's mass production Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines. The concepts of mass production are applied to various kinds of products, from fluids and particulates handled in bulk (such as food, fuel, chemicals, and mined minerals) to discrete solid parts (such as fasteners) to assemblies capability, reliability, and building-block approach to circuit design ensured the rapid adoption of standardized ICs in place of designs using discrete transistors.

There are two main advantages of ICs over discrete circuits A Discrete circuit is an electronic circuit built out of individual components, such as resistors, transistors, etc., instead of a single integrated circuit: cost and performance. Cost is low because the chips, with all their components, are printed as a unit by photolithography Photolithography is a process used in microfabrication to selectively remove parts of a thin film or the bulk of a substrate. It uses light to transfer a geometric pattern from a photo mask to a light-sensitive chemical photo resist, or simply "resist," on the substrate. A series of chemical treatments then engraves the exposure pattern and not constructed as one transistor at a time. Furthermore, much less material is used to construct a circuit as a packaged IC die than as a discrete circuit. Performance is high since the components switch quickly and consume little power (compared to their discrete counterparts) because the components are small and close together. As of 2006, chip areas range from a few square millimeters to around 350 mm2, with up to 1 million transistors A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals. It is made of a solid piece of semiconductor material, with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current flowing through another pair of terminals per mm2.

Invention

Jack Kilby Jack St. Clair Kilby was a Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 2000 for his invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 while working at Texas Instruments (TI). He is also the inventor of the handheld calculator and thermal printer's original integrated circuit

The idea of integrated circuit was conceived by a radar scientist working for the Royal Radar Establishment The Royal Radar Establishment, or RRE, was a renaming of the Radar Research Establishment, which was formed in 1953 from the merger of the Telecommunications Research Establishment and the Radar Research and Development Establishment (RRDE). The RRE was based in Malvern, Worcestershire, England, where both TRE and RRDE had been based, though at of the British Ministry of Defence The Ministry of Defence is the United Kingdom government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces, Geoffrey W.A. Dummer Geoffrey William Arnold Dummer, MBE , C.Eng., IEE Premium Award, FIEEE, MIEE, USA Medal of Freedom with Bronze Palm (25 February 1909 – 16 September 2002) was a British electronics author and consultant who is credited as being the first person to conceptualise the integrated circuit, commonly called the microchip, in the late-1940s and early 195 (1909-2002), who published it at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790. The City of Washington was originally a separate municipality within the Territory of Columbia until an act of Congress in 1871 effectively merged the City and the on May 7, 1952.[1] He gave many symposia publicly to propagate his ideas. Dummer unsuccessfully attempted to build such a circuit in 1956.

Jack Kilby Jack St. Clair Kilby was a Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 2000 for his invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 while working at Texas Instruments (TI). He is also the inventor of the handheld calculator and thermal printer recorded his initial ideas concerning the integrated circuit in July 1958 and successfully demonstrated the first working integrated circuit on September 12, 1958.[2] In his patent application of February 6, 1959, Kilby described his new device as “a body of semiconductor material ... wherein all the components of the electronic circuit are completely integrated.” [3] Kilby won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for his part of the invention of the integrated circuit.[4]

Robert Noyce Robert Norton Noyce , nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968. He is also credited (along with Jack Kilby) with the invention of the integrated circuit or microchip. While Kilby's invention was six months earlier, neither man rejected the title of co-inventor. Noyce was also a also came up with his own idea of an integrated circuit half a year later than Kilby. Noyce's chip solved many practical problems that Kilby's had not. Noyce's chip, made at Fairchild Semiconductor Present day Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. is a spin-off company resulting from reconstitution of assets in National Semiconductor. It inherits the Fairchild name of the original Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation, which had been the cornerstone of the semiconductor industry since 1957. The original Fairchild had been, was made of silicon Silicon is the most common metalloid. It is a chemical element, which has the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, silicon is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon. It is the eighth most common element in the universe by mass, but silicon very rarely occurs as the pure free element in nature. Silicon is more widely, whereas Kilby's chip was made of germanium Germanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is a lustrous, hard, grayish-white metalloid in the carbon group, chemically similar to its group neighbors tin and silicon. Germanium has five naturally occurring isotopes ranging in atomic mass number from 70 to 76. It forms a large number of organometallic compounds,.

Early developments of the integrated circuit go back to 1949, when the German engineer Werner Jacobi (Siemens AG Siemens AG is Europe's largest engineering conglomerate. Siemens' international headquarters are located in Berlin, Munich and Erlangen, Germany. The company has three main business sectors: Industry, Energy and Healthcare; with a total of 15 divisions) filed a patent for an integrated-circuit-like semiconductor amplifying device [5] showing five transistors on a common substrate arranged in a 2-stage amplifier Generally, an amplifier or simply amp, is any device that changes, usually increases, the amplitude of a signal. The relationship of the input to the output of an amplifier—usually expressed as a function of the input frequency—is called the transfer function of the amplifier, and the magnitude of the transfer function is termed the gain arrangement. Jacobi discloses small and cheap hearing aids A hearing aid is an electroacoustic apparatus which typically fits in or behind the wearer's ear, and is designed to amplify and modulate sound for the wearer. Earlier devices, known as an "ear trumpet" or "ear horn", were passive funnel-like amplification cones designed to gather sound energy and direct it into the ear canal as typical industrial applications of his patent. A commercial use of his patent has not been reported.

A precursor idea to the IC was to create small ceramic squares (wafers), each one containing a single miniaturized component. Components could then be integrated and wired into a bidimensional or tridimensional compact grid. This idea, which looked very promising in 1957, was proposed to the US Army by Jack Kilby Jack St. Clair Kilby was a Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 2000 for his invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 while working at Texas Instruments (TI). He is also the inventor of the handheld calculator and thermal printer, and led to the short-lived Micromodule Program (similar to 1951's Project Tinkertoy).[6] However, as the project was gaining momentum, Kilby came up with a new, revolutionary design: the IC.

Robert Noyce credited Kurt Lehovec Kurt Lehovec is one of the pioneers of the integrated circuit, 1959. He innovated the concept of p-n junction isolation used in every circuit element with a guard ring: a reverse-biased p-n junction surrounding the planar periphery of that element. This patent was assigned to Sprague Electric of Sprague Electric for the principle of p-n junction isolation p-n junction isolation is a method used to electrically isolate electronic components, such as transistors, on an integrated circuit by surrounding the components with reverse biased p-n junctions caused by the action of a biased p-n junction (the diode) as a key concept behind the IC.[7]

See: Other variations of vacuum tubes In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve (elsewhere, especially in Britain) is a device used to amplify, switch, otherwise modify, or create an electrical signal by controlling the movement of electrons in a low-pressure space. Some special function vacuum tubes are filled with low-pressure gas: these are so-called soft for precursor concepts such as the Loewe 3NF Produced by the German Loewe AG company as far back as 1926, the device consisted of 3 triode valves in a single glass envelope together with all the fixed capacitors and resistors required to make a complete radio receiver. The resistors and capacitors had to be sealed in their own glass tubes to prevent them from contaminating the vacuum.

Generations

SSI, MSI and LSI

The first integrated circuits contained only a few transistors. Called "Small-Scale Integration" (SSI), digital circuits containing transistors numbering in the tens provided a few logic gates for example, while early linear ICs such as the Plessey The Plessey Company plc was a British-based international electronics, defence and telecommunications company. It originated in 1917, growing and diversifying into electronics. It expanded after the second world war by acquisition of companies and formed overseas companies. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the SL201 or the Philips Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , most commonly known as Philips, (Euronext: PHIA, NYSE: PHG) is a multinational Dutch electronics corporation TAA320 had as few as two transistors. The term Large Scale Integration was first used by IBM International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) is a multinational computer, technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, North Castle, New York, United States. IBM is the world's fourth largest technology company and the second most valuable by global brand (after Coca-Cola). IBM is one of the few information technology companies scientist Rolf Landauer when describing the theoretical concept, from there came the terms for SSI, MSI, VLSI, and ULSI.

SSI circuits were crucial to early aerospace projects, and vice-versa. Both the Minuteman missile The LGM-30 Minuteman is a U.S. nuclear missile, a land-based intercontinental ballistic missile . As of 2009, it is the only land-based ICBM in service in the United States. It is complemented by the sea-launched Trident missile SLBM and by nuclear weapons carried by long-range strategic bombers; see current status of United States nuclear weapons and Apollo program The Apollo program was the American spaceflight endeavor which landed the first humans on Earth's Moon. Conceived during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and conducted by NASA, Apollo began in earnest after President John F. Kennedy's May 25, 1961 special address to a joint session of Congress declaring a national goal of "landing a man needed lightweight digital computers for their inertial guidance systems; the Apollo guidance computer The Apollo Guidance Computer was an on-board digital computer installed in each Apollo program spacecraft, both the Command Module (CM) and the Lunar Module (LM). It provided onboard computation to support spacecraft guidance, navigation and control. The AGC was the first recognizably modern embedded system, used in real-time by astronaut pilots led and motivated the integrated-circuit technology[citation needed], while the Minuteman missile forced it into mass-production.

These programs purchased almost all of the available integrated circuits from 1960 through 1963, and almost alone provided the demand that funded the production improvements to get the production costs from $1000/circuit (in 1960 dollars) to merely $25/circuit (in 1963 dollars).[citation needed] They began to appear in consumer products at the turn of the decade, a typical application being FM In telecommunications, frequency modulation conveys information over a carrier wave by varying its instantaneous frequency (contrast this with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier is varied while its frequency remains constant). In analog applications, the difference between the instantaneous and the base frequency of the inter-carrier sound processing in television Television is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images, either monochromatic ("black and white") or color, usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming or television transmission. The word is derived from mixed Latin receivers.

The next step in the development of integrated circuits, taken in the late 1960s, introduced devices which contained hundreds of transistors on each chip, called "Medium-Scale Integration" (MSI).

They were attractive economically because while they cost little more to produce than SSI devices, they allowed more complex systems to be produced using smaller circuit boards, less assembly work (because of fewer separate components), and a number of other advantages.

Further development, driven by the same economic factors, led to "Large-Scale Integration" (LSI) in the mid 1970s, with tens of thousands of transistors per chip.

Integrated circuits such as 1K-bit RAMs, calculator chips, and the first microprocessors, that began to be manufactured in moderate quantities in the early 1970s, had under 4000 transistors. True LSI circuits, approaching 10000 transistors, began to be produced around 1974, for computer main memories and second-generation microprocessors.

VLSI

Main article: Very-large-scale integration Very-large-scale integration is the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistor-based circuits into a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when complex semiconductor and communication technologies were being developed. The microprocessor is a VLSI device. The term is no longer as common as it once was, as chips Upper interconnect layers on an Intel 80486 The Intel 80486 was a microprocessor produced by Intel and the first tightly pipelined x86 design. Introduced in 1989, it was also the first x86 chip to use more than a million transistors, due to a large on-chip cache and an integrated floating point unit. It represents a fourth generation of binary compatible CPUs since the original 8086 of 1978,DX2 microprocessor die.

The final step in the development process, starting in the 1980s and continuing through the present, was "very large-scale integration" (VLSI Very-large-scale integration is the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistor-based circuits into a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when complex semiconductor and communication technologies were being developed. The microprocessor is a VLSI device. The term is no longer as common as it once was, as chips). The development started with hundreds of thousands of transistors in the early 1980s, and continues beyond several billion transistors as of 2009.

There was no single breakthrough that allowed this increase in complexity, though many factors helped. Manufacturers moved to smaller rules and cleaner fabs, so that they could make chips with more transistors and maintain adequate yield. The path of process improvements was summarized by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors is a set of documents produced by a group of semiconductor industry experts. These experts are representative of the sponsoring organisations which include the Semiconductor Industry Associations of the US, Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan (ITRS). Design tools Electronic design automation is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as printed circuit boards and integrated circuits. The tools work together in a design flow that chip designers use to design and analyze entire semiconductor chips improved enough to make it practical to finish these designs in a reasonable time. The more energy efficient CMOS Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (pronounced /ˈsiːmɒs/) is a technology for constructing integrated circuits. CMOS technology is used in microprocessors, microcontrollers, static RAM, and other digital logic circuits. CMOS technology is also used for several analog circuits such as image sensors, data converters, and highly integrated replaced NMOS and PMOS, avoiding a prohibitive increase in power consumption. Better texts such as the landmark textbook by Mead Professor Carver Andress Mead is a prominent U.S. computer scientist. He is the Gordon and Betty Moore professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), having taught there for over 40 years and Conway Lynn Conway is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, inventor, trans woman, and activist for the transgender community helped schools educate more designers, among other factors.

In 1986 the first one megabit RAM chips were introduced, which contained more than one million transistors. Microprocessor chips passed the million transistor mark in 1989 and the billion transistor mark in 2005[8]. The trend continues largely unabated, with chips introduced in 2007 containing tens of billions of memory transistors [9].

ULSI, WSI, SOC and 3D-IC

To reflect further growth of the complexity, the term ULSI that stands for "ultra-large-scale integration" was proposed for chips of complexity of more than 1 million transistors.

Wafer-scale integration (WSI) is a system of building very-large integrated circuits that uses an entire silicon wafer to produce a single "super-chip". Through a combination of large size and reduced packaging, WSI could lead to dramatically reduced costs for some systems, notably massively parallel supercomputers. The name is taken from the term Very-Large-Scale Integration, the current state of the art when WSI was being developed.

A system-on-a-chip (SoC or SOC) is an integrated circuit in which all the components needed for a computer or other system are included on a single chip. The design of such a device can be complex and costly, and building disparate components on a single piece of silicon may compromise the efficiency of some elements. However, these drawbacks are offset by lower manufacturing and assembly costs and by a greatly reduced power budget: because signals among the components are kept on-die, much less power is required (see Packaging).

A three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D-IC) has two or more layers of active electronic components that are integrated both vertically and horizontally into a single circuit. Communication between layers uses on-die signaling, so power consumption is much lower than in equivalent separate circuits. Judicious use of short vertical wires can substantially reduce overall wire length for faster operation.

Advances in integrated circuits

The integrated circuit from an Intel 8742, an 8-bit microcontroller that includes a CPU running at 12 MHz, 128 bytes of RAM, 2048 bytes of EPROM, and I/O in the same chip.

Among the most advanced integrated circuits are the microprocessors or "cores", which control everything from computers to cellular phones to digital microwave ovens. Digital memory chips and ASICs are examples of other families of integrated circuits that are important to the modern information society. While the cost of designing and developing a complex integrated circuit is quite high, when spread across typically millions of production units the individual IC cost is minimized. The performance of ICs is high because the small size allows short traces which in turn allows low power logic (such as CMOS) to be used at fast switching speeds.

ICs have consistently migrated to smaller feature sizes over the years, allowing more circuitry to be packed on each chip. This increased capacity per unit area can be used to decrease cost and/or increase functionality—see Moore's law which, in its modern interpretation, states that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years. In general, as the feature size shrinks, almost everything improves—the cost per unit and the switching power consumption go down, and the speed goes up. However, ICs with nanometer-scale devices are not without their problems, principal among which is leakage current (see subthreshold leakage for a discussion of this), although these problems are not insurmountable and will likely be solved or at least ameliorated by the introduction of high-k dielectrics. Since these speed and power consumption gains are apparent to the end user, there is fierce competition among the manufacturers to use finer geometries. This process, and the expected progress over the next few years, is well described by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS).

Popularity of ICs

Only a half century after their development was initiated, integrated circuits have become ubiquitous. Computers, cellular phones, and other digital appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies. That is, modern computing, communications, manufacturing and transport systems, including the Internet, all depend on the existence of integrated circuits.

Classification

A CMOS 4000 IC in a DIP

Integrated circuits can be classified into analog, digital and mixed signal (both analog and digital on the same chip).

Digital integrated circuits can contain anything from one to millions of logic gates, flip-flops, multiplexers, and other circuits in a few square millimeters. The small size of these circuits allows high speed, low power dissipation, and reduced manufacturing cost compared with board-level integration. These digital ICs, typically microprocessors, DSPs, and micro controllers work using binary mathematics to process "one" and "zero" signals.

Analog ICs, such as sensors, power management circuits, and operational amplifiers, work by processing continuous signals. They perform functions like amplification, active filtering, demodulation, mixing, etc. Analog ICs ease the burden on circuit designers by having expertly designed analog circuits available instead of designing a difficult analog circuit from scratch.

ICs can also combine analog and digital circuits on a single chip to create functions such as A/D converters and D/A converters. Such circuits offer smaller size and lower cost, but must carefully account for signal interference.

Manufacturing

Fabrication

Main article: Semiconductor fabrication Rendering of a small standard cell with three metal layers (dielectric has been removed). The sand-colored structures are metal interconnect, with the vertical pillars being contacts, typically plugs of tungsten. The reddish structures are polysilicon gates, and the solid at the bottom is the crystalline silicon bulk. Schematic structure of a CMOS chip, as built in the early 2000s. The graphic shows LDD-MISFET's on an SOI substrate with five metallization layers and solder bump for flip-chip bonding. It also shows the section for FEOL (front-end of line), BEOL (back-end of line) and first parts of back-end process.

The semiconductors of the periodic table of the chemical elements were identified as the most likely materials for a solid state vacuum tube by researchers like William Shockley at Bell Laboratories starting in the 1930s. Starting with copper oxide, proceeding to germanium, then silicon, the materials were systematically studied in the 1940s and 1950s. Today, silicon monocrystals are the main substrate used for integrated circuits (ICs) although some III-V compounds of the periodic table such as gallium arsenide are used for specialized applications like LEDs, lasers, solar cells and the highest-speed integrated circuits. It took decades to perfect methods of creating crystals without defects in the crystalline structure of the semiconducting material.

Semiconductor ICs are fabricated in a layer process which includes these key process steps:

The main process steps are supplemented by doping and cleaning.

Mono-crystal silicon wafers (or for special applications, silicon on sapphire or gallium arsenide wafers) are used as the substrate. Photolithography is used to mark different areas of the substrate to be doped or to have polysilicon, insulators or metal (typically aluminium) tracks deposited on them.

Since a CMOS device only draws current on the transition between logic states, CMOS devices consume much less current than bipolar devices.

A random access memory is the most regular type of integrated circuit; the highest density devices are thus memories; but even a microprocessor will have memory on the chip. (See the regular array structure at the bottom of the first image.) Although the structures are intricate – with widths which have been shrinking for decades – the layers remain much thinner than the device widths. The layers of material are fabricated much like a photographic process, although light waves in the visible spectrum cannot be used to "expose" a layer of material, as they would be too large for the features. Thus photons of higher frequencies (typically ultraviolet) are used to create the patterns for each layer. Because each feature is so small, electron microscopes are essential tools for a process engineer who might be debugging a fabrication process.

Each device is tested before packaging using automated test equipment (ATE), in a process known as wafer testing, or wafer probing. The wafer is then cut into rectangular blocks, each of which is called a die. Each good die (plural dice, dies, or die) is then connected into a package using aluminium (or gold) bond wires which are welded and/or Thermosonic Bonded to pads, usually found around the edge of the die. After packaging, the devices go through final testing on the same or similar ATE used during wafer probing. Test cost can account for over 25% of the cost of fabrication on lower cost products, but can be negligible on low yielding, larger, and/or higher cost devices.

As of 2005, a fabrication facility (commonly known as a semiconductor lab) costs over a billion US Dollars to construct[10], because much of the operation is automated. The most advanced processes employ the following techniques:

Packaging

Main article: Integrated circuit packaging Early USSR made integrated circuit

The earliest integrated circuits were packaged in ceramic flat packs, which continued to be used by the military for their reliability and small size for many years. Commercial circuit packaging quickly moved to the dual in-line package (DIP), first in ceramic and later in plastic. In the 1980s pin counts of VLSI circuits exceeded the practical limit for DIP packaging, leading to pin grid array (PGA) and leadless chip carrier (LCC) packages. Surface mount packaging appeared in the early 1980s and became popular in the late 1980s, using finer lead pitch with leads formed as either gull-wing or J-lead, as exemplified by small-outline integrated circuit -- a carrier which occupies an area about 30 – 50% less than an equivalent DIP, with a typical thickness that is 70% less. This package has "gull wing" leads protruding from the two long sides and a lead spacing of 0.050 inches.

In the late 1990s, PQFP and TSOP packages became the most common for high pin count devices, though PGA packages are still often used for high-end microprocessors. Intel and AMD are currently transitioning from PGA packages on high-end microprocessors to land grid array (LGA) packages.

Ball grid array (BGA) packages have existed since the 1970s. Flip-chip Ball Grid Array packages, which allow for much higher pin count than other package types, were developed in the 1990s. In an FCBGA package the die is mounted upside-down (flipped) and connects to the package balls via a package substrate that is similar to a printed-circuit board rather than by wires. FCBGA packages allow an array of input-output signals (called Area-I/O) to be distributed over the entire die rather than being confined to the die periphery.

Traces out of the die, through the package, and into the printed circuit board have very different electrical properties, compared to on-chip signals. They require special design techniques and need much more electric power than signals confined to the chip itself.

When multiple dies are put in one package, it is called SiP, for System In Package. When multiple dies are combined on a small substrate, often ceramic, it's called an MCM, or Multi-Chip Module. The boundary between a big MCM and a small printed circuit board is sometimes fuzzy.

Chip labeling and manufacture date

Most integrated circuits large enough to include identifying information include four common sections: the manufacturer's name or logo, the part number, a part production batch number and/or serial number, and a four-digit code that identifies when the chip was manufactured. Extremely small surface mount technology parts often bear only a number used in a manufacturer's lookup table to find the chip characteristics.

The manufacturing date is commonly represented as a two-digit year followed by a two-digit week code, such that a part bearing the code 8341 was manufactured in week 41 of 1983, or approximately in October 1983.

Legal protection of semiconductor chip layouts

Main article: Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984

Prior to 1984, it was not necessarily illegal to produce a competing chip with an identical layout. As the legislative history for the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984, or SCPA, explained, patent and copyright protection for chip layouts, or topographies, were largely unavailable. This led to considerable complaint by U.S. chip manufacturers—notably, Intel, which took the lead in seeking legislation, along with the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA)--against what they termed "chip piracy."

A 1984 addition to US law, the SCPA, made all so-called mask works (i.e., chip topographies) protectable if registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Similar rules apply in most other countries that manufacture ICs. (This is a simplified explanation - see SCPA for legal details.)

Other developments

In the 1980s, programmable integrated circuits were developed. These devices contain circuits whose logical function and connectivity can be programmed by the user, rather than being fixed by the integrated circuit manufacturer. This allows a single chip to be programmed to implement different LSI-type functions such as logic gates, adders and registers. Current devices named FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) can now implement tens of thousands of LSI circuits in parallel and operate up to 550 MHz.

The techniques perfected by the integrated circuits industry over the last three decades have been used to create microscopic machines, known as MEMS. These devices are used in a variety of commercial and military applications. Example commercial applications include DLP projectors, inkjet printers, and accelerometers used to deploy automobile airbags.

In the past, radios could not be fabricated in the same low-cost processes as microprocessors. But since 1998, a large number of radio chips have been developed using CMOS processes. Examples include Intel's DECT cordless phone, or Atheros's 802.11 card.

Future developments seem to follow the multi-core multi-microprocessor paradigm, already used by the Intel and AMD dual-core processors. Intel recently unveiled a prototype, "not for commercial sale" chip that bears a staggering 80 microprocessors. Each core is capable of handling its own task independently of the others. This is in response to the heat-versus-speed limit that is about to be reached using existing transistor technology. This design provides a new challenge to chip programming. Parallel programming languages such as the open-source X10 programming language are designed to assist with this task.[11]

Silicon labelling and graffiti

To allow identification during production most silicon chips will have a serial number in one corner. It is also common to add the manufactuers logo. Ever since ICs were created, some chip designers have used the silicon surface area for surreptitious, non-functional images or words. These are sometimes referred to as Chip Art, Silicon Art, Silicon Graffiti or Silicon Doodling.

Key industrial and academic data

The lists in this article may contain items that are not notable, encyclopedic, or helpful. Please help out by removing such elements and incorporating appropriate items into the main body of the article. (January 2008)

Notable ICs

Manufacturers

For a list of microchip manufacturers, see List of integrated circuit manufacturers.

VLSI conferences

VLSI journals

See also

Electronics portal
General topics
Related devices and terms
IC device technologies
Other

References

Academic
Precursors and patents
  1. ^ "The Hapless Tale of Geoffrey Dummer", (n.d.), (HTML), Electronic Product News, accessed July 8, 2008.
  2. ^ The Chip that Jack Built, (c. 2008), (HTML), Texas Instruments, accessed May 29, 2008.
  3. ^ Winston, Brian. Media technology and society: a history: from the telegraph to the Internet, (1998), Routeledge, London, ISBN 041514230X ISBN 978-0415142304, p. 221
  4. ^ Nobel Web AB, (October 10, 2000),(The Nobel Prize in Physics 2000, Retrieved on May 29, 2008
  5. ^ DE patent 833366 W. Jacobi/SIEMENS AG: „Halbleiterverstärker“ priority filing on April 14, 1949, published on May 15, 1952.
  6. ^ George Rostky, (n. d.),"Micromodules: the ultimate package", (HTML), EE Times, accessed July 8, 2008.
  7. ^ Kurt Lehovec's patent on the isolation p-n junction: U.S. Patent 3,029,366 granted on April 10, 1962, filed April 22, 1959. Robert Noyce credits Lehovec in his article – "Microelectronics", Scientific American, September 1977, Volume 23, Number 3, pp. 63–9.
  8. ^ Peter Clarke, EE Times: Intel enters billion-transistor processor era, 14 November 2005
  9. ^ Antone Gonsalves, EE Times, Samsung begins production of 16-Gb flash, 30 April 2007
  10. ^ For example, Intel Fab 28 cost 3.5 billion USD, while its neighboring Fab 18 cost 1.5 billion USD http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=29958
  11. ^ Biever, C. "Chip revolution poses problems for programmers", New Scientist (Vol 193, Number 2594)

Further reading

External links

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General

Author S.P. Marsh

Patents

Audio video

Silicon graffiti

Integrated circuit die photographs

Digital systems
Components Logic gate · Digital circuit · Integrated circuit (IC)
Theory Boolean logic · Digital signal processing · Computer architecture
Applications Digital audio · Digital photography · Digital video

Categories: Integrated circuits | Semiconductor devices | Discovery and invention controversies

 

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'Integrated Circuit' News
Elster Chooses Silicon Laboratories IC For Smart Meter - Renew Grid
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Renew Grid by Renew Grid on Thursday 24 June 2010 Silicon Laboratories Inc. says Elster has chosen the Si8422 5 kV digital isolator integrated circuit (IC) for its ...
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This performance is claimed to be a new record, more than doubling the frequency of the fastest reported . integrated circuit. . Figure 1: Details of compact 670 GHz circuit layout. These achievements have been enabled by the development on ...

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What is Discrete transistor and Integrated Circuit CPUs ?
Q. What is Discrete transistor and Integrated Circuit CPUs ?
Asked by jeyachandran Arun - Fri Dec 18 06:14:12 2009 - - 2 Answers - 0 Comments

A. The design complexity of CPUs increased as various technologies facilitated building smaller and more reliable electronic devices. The first such improvement came with the advent of the transistor. Transistorized CPUs during the 1950s and 1960s no longer had to be built out of bulky, unreliable, and fragile switching elements like vacuum tubes and electrical relays. With this improvement more complex and reliable CPUs were built onto one or several printed circuit boards containing discrete (individual) components
Answered by Path Finder - Fri Dec 18 06:17:31 2009

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