An integrated circuit, also known as a microchip, chip or IC, is a small electronic device made up of multiple interconnected electronic components such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors. These components are etched onto a small piece of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Integrated circuits are used in a wide range of electronic devices, including computers, smartphones, and televisions, to perform various functions such as processing and storing information. They have greatly impacted the field of electronics by enabling device miniaturization and enhanced functionality.
MEMS is the technology of microscopic devices incorporating both electronic and moving parts. MEMS are made up of components between 1 and 100 micrometres in size, and MEMS devices generally range in size from 20 micrometres to a millimetre, although components arranged in arrays can be more than 1000 mm2. They usually consist of a central unit that processes data and several components that interact with the surroundings.
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuits (ICs) such as computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips that are present in everyday electronic devices. It is a multiple-step photolithographic and physio-chemical process during which electronic circuits are gradually created on a wafer, typically made of pure single-crystal semiconducting material. Silicon is almost always used, but various compound semiconductors are used for specialized applications.
Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics, it is an empirical relationship linked to gains from experience in production.
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFETs for logic functions. CMOS technology is used for constructing integrated circuit (IC) chips, including microprocessors, microcontrollers, memory chips, and other digital logic circuits. CMOS technology is also used for analog circuits such as image sensors, data converters, RF circuits, and highly integrated transceivers for many types of communication.
A mixed-signal integrated circuit is any integrated circuit that has both analog circuits and digital circuits on a single semiconductor die. Their usage has grown dramatically with the increased use of cell phones, telecommunications, portable electronics, and automobiles with electronics and digital sensors.
Multi-project chip (MPC), and multi-project wafer (MPW) semiconductor manufacturing arrangements allow customers to share tooling and microelectronics wafer fabrication cost between several designs or projects.
The term die shrink refers to the scaling of metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) devices. The act of shrinking a die creates a somewhat identical circuit using a more advanced fabrication process, usually involving an advance of lithographic nodes. This reduces overall costs for a chip company, as the absence of major architectural changes to the processor lowers research and development costs while at the same time allowing more processor dies to be manufactured on the same piece of silicon wafer, resulting in less cost per product sold.
In electronic engineering, a through-silicon via (TSV) or through-chip via is a vertical electrical connection (via) that passes completely through a silicon wafer or die. TSVs are high-performance interconnect techniques used as an alternative to wire-bond and flip chips to create 3D packages and 3D integrated circuits. Compared to alternatives such as package-on-package, the interconnect and device density is substantially higher, and the length of the connections becomes shorter.
A three-dimensional integrated circuit is a MOS integrated circuit (IC) manufactured by stacking as many as 16 or more ICs and interconnecting them vertically using, for instance, through-silicon vias (TSVs) or Cu-Cu connections, so that they behave as a single device to achieve performance improvements at reduced power and smaller footprint than conventional two dimensional processes. The 3D IC is one of several 3D integration schemes that exploit the z-direction to achieve electrical performance benefits in microelectronics and nanoelectronics.
In integrated circuits, optical interconnects refers to any system of transmitting signals from one part of an integrated circuit to another using light. Optical interconnects have been the topic of study due to the high latency and power consumption incurred by conventional metal interconnects in transmitting electrical signals over long distances, such as in interconnects classed as global interconnects. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) has highlighted interconnect scaling as a problem for the semiconductor industry.
Microelectromechanical system oscillators are devices that generate highly stable reference frequencies used to sequence electronic systems, manage data transfer, define radio frequencies, and measure elapsed time. The core technologies used in MEMS oscillators have been in development since the mid-1960s, but have only been sufficiently advanced for commercial applications since 2006. MEMS oscillators incorporate MEMS resonators, which are microelectromechanical structures that define stable frequencies. MEMS clock generators are MEMS timing devices with multiple outputs for systems that need more than a single reference frequency. MEMS oscillators are a valid alternative to older, more established quartz crystal oscillators, offering better resilience against vibration and mechanical shock, and reliability with respect to temperature variation.
The IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) is an annual micro- and nanoelectronics conference held each December that serves as a forum for reporting technological breakthroughs in the areas of semiconductor and related device technologies, design, manufacturing, physics, modeling and circuit-device interaction.
Beyond CMOS refers to the possible future digital logic technologies beyond the scaling limits of CMOS technology. which limits device density and speeds due to heating effects.
The Task Force on Rebooting Computing (TFRC), housed within IEEE Computer Society, is the new home for the IEEE Rebooting Computing Initiative. Founded in 2013 by the IEEE Future Directions Committee, Rebooting Computing has provided an international, interdisciplinary environment where experts from a wide variety of computer-related fields can come together to explore novel approaches to future computing. IEEE Rebooting Computing began as a global initiative launched by IEEE that proposes to rethink the concept of computing through a holistic look at all aspects of computing, from the device itself to the user interface. As part of its work, IEEE Rebooting Computing provides access to various resources like conferences and educational events, feature and scholarly articles, reports, and videos.
Bijan Davari is an Iranian-American electrical engineer. He is an IBM Fellow and Vice President at IBM Thomas J Watson Research Center, Yorktown Hts, NY. His pioneering work in the miniaturization of semiconductor devices changed the world of computing. His research led to the first generation of voltage-scaled deep-submicron CMOS with sufficient performance to totally replace bipolar technology in IBM mainframes and enable new high-performance UNIX servers. As head of IBM’s Semiconductor Research Center (SRDC), he led IBM into the use of Copper interconnect, silicon on insulator (SOI), and Embedded DRAM before its rivals. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and is known for his seminal contributions to the field of CMOS technology. He is an IEEE Fellow, recipient of the J J Ebers Award in 2005 and IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award in 2010. At the present time, he leads the Next Generation Systems Area of research.
The International Roadmap for Devices and Systems, or IRDS, is a set of predictions about likely developments in electronic devices and systems. The IRDS was established in 2016 and is the successor to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. These predictions are intended to allow coordination of efforts across academia, manufacturers, equipment suppliers, and national research laboratories. The IEEE specifies the goals of the roadmap as:
Bruno Murari is an Italian inventor. During his career he has patented about 200 inventions in the field of circuit design, power technologies and MEMS devices. He is the only Italian to have received the Elmer A. Sperry Award., which is awarded to those who have distinguished themselves with proven engineering contributions to advance the field of transport. He was defined "legendary analog engineer" and "father" of the BCD technology
RF CMOS is a metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit (IC) technology that integrates radio-frequency (RF), analog and digital electronics on a mixed-signal CMOS RF circuit chip. It is widely used in modern wireless telecommunications, such as cellular networks, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS receivers, broadcasting, vehicular communication systems, and the radio transceivers in all modern mobile phones and wireless networking devices. RF CMOS technology was pioneered by Pakistani engineer Asad Ali Abidi at UCLA during the late 1980s to early 1990s, and helped bring about the wireless revolution with the introduction of digital signal processing in wireless communications. The development and design of RF CMOS devices was enabled by van der Ziel's FET RF noise model, which was published in the early 1960s and remained largely forgotten until the 1990s.
