Types of IC and Their Functions

What is IC?

An integrated circuit (IC) is a combination of electronic components, such as transistors, capacitors, and resistors. An IC is designed to fulfill some logical function. It can be built to be a timer, counter, bank of computer memory or even a microprocessor.

Basic Electronic Building Blocks of an Integrated Circuit

The basic building block of an IC is a logic gate. Alogic gate performs the Boolean algebra AND operation by testing two input signals (each stored in a transistor). If both are positive (representing true or 1), it sets the signal of a result value to positive. Otherwise, the value is set to negative (representing false or 0).

Types of IC

There are mainly five types of IC:
i. SSI: It stands for Small Scale Integration. It is the beginning of IC technology in 1961. In SSI, typically 2 to 10 transistors making around 3 to 30 logic gates per chip are fabricated on a single chip.
ii. MSI: MSI stands for Medium Scale Integration. In MSI, typically 100 to 1000 transistors making 30 to 300 logic gates per chip are fabricated on a single chip.
iii. LSI: It stands for Large Scale Integration. LSI is the process of integrating thousands of transistors on a single silicon semiconductor microchip.
iv. VLSI: VLSI stands for Very Large Scale Integration. It is the process of integrating hundreds of thousands of transistors on a single silicon semiconductor microchip.
v. ULSI: ULSI stands for Ultra Large Scale Integration. It is the process of integrating millions of transistors on a single silicon semiconductor microchip.