Analysis of the difference between chips and integrated circuits

I believe you have heard of chips and integrated circuits, but you don’t know what they are. What is the difference between chips and integrated circuits, and what is the difference between IC and chips? We will find out soon ~

The difference between IC and chip:

Integrated circuits are called ICs, and devices based on integrated circuit technology are chips. In short, an IC is composed of multiple chips. The abbreviation of Integrated circuit is IC. In the past, computers were assembled from tens of thousands of transistors and electron tubes. If this was done in this way, if one of the solder joints among these large numbers of devices was broken, it would cause the entire machine to become inoperable. Therefore, in order to avoid this situation, integrated circuits are made using microelectronics technology. According to scale, integrated circuits can be divided into ultra-large-scale, large-scale, medium-scale, and small-scale types. It is necessary to place tens to tens of millions of transistors, electron tubes and other devices on an area of ​​several square centimeters. The structure is very fine. The effect of such an integrated circuit is not small, and there are countless lines in it. It’s not easy to make either.

Like the central processing unit (CPU), the processor made of integrated circuits is a chip. The circuit diagram of the central processing unit (CPU) needs to be drawn on square meters of paper, which is difficult to see clearly. A CPU circuit diagram is equivalent to drawing a map of a big city. You need to draw various trails and then reduce them to the size of the CPU. One can imagine the complexity of its circuit. In addition, various optical disc decoders (your DVD players) also have chips, handheld game consoles also have chips (such as cassettes), SIM cards and IC cards have chips, and chips are present in almost all electrical appliances around us, regardless of size. The scale is just different.

The difference between chips and integrated circuits

The emphasis to be expressed is different. A chip is a chip, which generally refers to the square piece that you can see with the naked eye and is covered with many little feet or the feet cannot be seen but are clearly square. However, chips also include a variety of chips, such as baseband, voltage conversion, etc.

The processor places more emphasis on functionality, which refers to the unit that performs processing, which can be said to be MCU, CPU, etc. The scope of integrated circuits is much wider. Integrating some resistors, capacitors, and diodes together is considered an integrated circuit. It may be an analog signal conversion chip, or it may be a logic control chip, but in general, this concept is more biased toward the bottom layer. s things.

Integrated circuits refer to active devices, passive components and their interconnections that make up a circuit and are fabricated together on a semiconductor substrate or an insulating substrate to form a structurally closely connected and internally related electronic circuit. It can be divided into three main branches: semiconductor integrated circuits, film integrated circuits, and hybrid integrated circuits. Chip is the collective name for semiconductor component products. It is the carrier of integrated circuit (IC, integrated circuit) and is divided into wafers. The above is the explanation of chips and integrated circuits. I hope that designers can continue to accumulate experience during the design process, so that the designed products will be more usable.