Evolution of Microchips
In Everything that has been invented up till now that has been vastly used in each field around the globe, Microchips is at the highest place. There will be no technology without its applications. We'll brief about its history starting with its predecessor in this article.
There have been revolutionary changes in computing hardware time and again, and the following article aims to walk you through it step by step. Gordon Moore once said that "If the auto industry advanced as rapidly as the semiconductor industry, a Rolls Royce would go half a million miles per gallon and it would be cheaper to throw it away than park it".
During the 20 years from 1955 to 1975, Magnetic-core memory was the predominant form of random-access computer memory. Often referred to just as "core memory", it used hard magnetic toroids as transformer cores with 3-4 wires threaded through them serving as the winding. Each core could store a bit of information, 0 or 1, based on the direction of that core's magnetization decided by the electric pulses that were sent through these cores.
The process of reading these cores caused them to reset to a zero, and thus it was called "destructive readout".
Everything there is in electronics today started with logic gates, and it has evolved like none other. When computing devices were first created, in the 1940s, logic gates were assembled from a mixture of relays and vacuum tubes, that was the very start. A vacuum tube computer, now termed a first-generation computer, is a computer that uses vacuum tubes for logic circuitry. This circuit became the basis of the flip-flop, a circuit with two states that became the fundamental element of electronic binary digital computers. Memory storage vacuum tube computers were used, which required a great deal of electricity.
We have seven logic gates, from which combinational circuits were developed.
Combinational Logic Circuits are made up from basic logic NAND, NOR or NOT gates that are "combined" or connected to produce more complicated switching circuits. These logic gates are the building blocks of combinational logic circuits. Combinational logic circuits can be very simple or very complicated, and any combinational circuit can be implemented with only NAND and NOR gates as these are classed as "universal" gates.
Integrated Circuits
An integrated circuit is a circuit in which all or some of the circuit elements are inseparably associated and electrically interconnected so that it is considered to be indivisible for the purposes of construction and commerce. The main advantage of IC's are small size and high performance.
Evolution of Integrated Circuits
In the early days of simple integrated circuits, the technology's large scale limited each chip to only a few transistors, and the low degree of integration meant the design process was relatively simple. Manufacturing yields were also quite low by today's standards. As metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) technology progressed, millions and then billions of MOS transistors could be placed on one chip, and sound designs required thorough planning, giving rise to the field of electronic design automation, or EDA.
Small Scale Integration (SSI):
The first integrated circuits contained only a few transistors. Early digital circuits containing tens of transistors provided a few logic gates, and old linear ICs such as the Plessey SL201 or the Philips TAA320 had as few as two transistors. SSI circuits were crucial to early aerospace projects, and aerospace projects helped inspire the development of the technology. Both the Minuteman missile and Apollo program needed lightweight digital computers for their inertial guidance systems.
Medium Scale Integration (MSI):
The next step in the development of integrated circuits introduced devices which contained hundreds of transistors on each chip, called "medium-scale integration" (MSI). MOSFET scaling technology made it possible to build high-density chips. By 1964, MOS chips had reached higher transistor density and lower manufacturing costs than bipolar chips. For example, in 1964, Frank Wanlass demonstrated a single-chip 16-bit shift register using 120 MOS transistors on a single chip. In the same year the first commercial MOS IC chip, a 20-bit shift register was introduced by Microelectronics.
Large Scale Integration (LSI):
Further development, driven by the same MOSFET scaling technology and economic factors, led to "large-scale integration" (LSI) by the mid-1970s, with tens of thousands of transistors per chip. One of the first components built on LSI technology was 1-K bit RAM, which contained 4,000 transistors. Following components and microprocessors held up to 10,000 embedded transistors.
Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI):
The final step in the development process, starting in the 1980s and continuing through the present, is "very-large-scale integration" (VLSI). The development started with hundreds of thousands of transistors in the early 1980s, and As of 2016, transistor counts continue to grow beyond ten billion transistors per chip.
And there rose the Ultra Large Scale Integration(ULSI):
Multiple developments were required to achieve this increased density. Manufacturers moved to smaller MOSFET design rules and cleaner fabrication facilities so that they could make chips with more transistors and maintain adequate yield.
Electronic design tools improved enough to make it practical to finish these designs in a reasonable time. The more energy-efficient CMOS replaced NMOS(n-type) and PMOS(p-type), avoiding a prohibitive increase in power consumption.
Modern VLSI devices contain so many transistors, layers, interconnections, and other features that it is no longer feasible to check the masks or do the original design by hand. Instead, engineers use EDA tools to perform most functional verification work.
Moore's Law
Moore's law is a quite exciting law in the field of semiconductor technology. It is an observation and projection of a historical trend. It is an empirical relationship and not a physical or natural law. It was named of the Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and CEO and co-founder of Intel. It is just an observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years.
This prediction has been used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets on research and development. Many advancements in digital electronics such as the reduction in quality-adjusted microprocessor prices, the increase in memory capacity (RAM and flash), the improvement of sensors, and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras, are strongly linked to Moore's law.
The memory capacity and faster calculation have reduced time complexities in handling a tremendous amount of data. This has helped the field of AI as it's primary requirement is to train learning algorithms with data, in a massive amount of processing to make undeniably faster in predictions. And the advancements in miniaturization and structural implementations in microchips has made it all possible. There would not have been a technological world without microchips.
Who knew something so small could impact society so greatly?
An Article By: ElecFest Team
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