Integration Circuit (IC) is a small silicon semiconductor crystal called a chip. It contains electrical components such as transistors, decodes, resistors and capacitors. These components are interconnected and form an electronic circuit. The chip is mounted on a metal or plastic package. Connections are welded to external pins to form the IC.
The difference between integrated circuits and other electronic circuits is that the components in IC cannot be separated while the other circuits have detachable components. The circuits inside the package is accessible only through the external pins.
There are two types of IC packages; flat package and dual-in-line package. The dual-in-line packages are widely used as they are cheap and can be installed easily on circuit boards. The envelope of the package is made of ceramic or plastic. The packages are usually of standard size and the number of pins ranges from 8 to 64. The IC is identified by the number printed on the surface of the package.
The IC packages are small in size. For example, four AND gates are enclosed inside a 14-pin dual-in-line package with dimension of 20*8*3 milimeters. A microprocessor can be enclosed within a 40-pin dual-in-line package with dimension of 50*15*4 millimeters.
Integrated circuits can be classified into linear and digital. Linear ICs operate with continuous signals and provides electronic functions such as amplifiers and voltage comparators. Digital ICs are made up of interconnected digital gates. They operate with binary signals.
Small-scale integration (SSI) device consists of a few logic gates in a single package. Medium-scale integration (MSI) device perform a complete logic function with 10 to 100 gates. Large-scale integration device (LSI) performs logic function with more than 100 gates. Very large-scale integration device (VLSI) contains thousands of gates in a single chip.
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