An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece of semiconductor material that is normally silicon. The integration of large numbers of tiny transistors into a small chip results in circuits that are orders of magnitude smaller, faster, and less expensive than those constructed of discrete electronic components. The IC's mass production capability, reliability, and building-block approach to circuit design has ensured the rapid adoption of standardized ICs in place of designs using discrete transistors. ICs are now used in virtually all electronic equipment and have revolutionized the world of electronics. Computers, mobile phones, and other digital home appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies, made possible by the small size and low cost of ICs.
Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions of transistors or devices into a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when complex semiconductor and communication technologies were being developed, and the MOS transistor was widely adopted. The microprocessor is a VLSI device. Before the introduction of VLSI technology, most ICs had a limited set of functions they could perform. An electronic circuit might consist of a CPU, ROM, RAM and other glue logic. VLSI lets IC designers add all of these into one chip.
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globally. Its headquarters are in Dallas, Texas, United States. TI is one of the top-10 semiconductor companies worldwide, based on sales volume. Texas Instruments's focus is on developing analog chips and embedded processors, which account for more than 80% of their revenue. TI also produces TI digital light processing technology and education technology products including calculators, microcontrollers and multi-core processors. To date, TI has more than 45,000 patents worldwide.
Cypress Semiconductor Corporation is an American semiconductor design and manufacturing company. It offers NOR flash memories, F-RAM and SRAM Traveo microcontrollers, the industry's only PSoC programmable system-on-chip solutions, analog and PMIC Power Management ICs, CapSense capacitive touch-sensing controllers, Wireless BLE Bluetooth Low-Energy and USB connectivity solutions.
Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing the fabrication of the devices to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. Foundries are typically, but not exclusively, located in mainland China and Taiwan. Thus, fabless companies can benefit from lower capital costs while concentrating their research and development resources on the end market.
Silicon Glen is a nickname for the high tech sector of Scotland, the name inspired by Silicon Valley in California. It is applied to the Central Belt triangle between Dundee, Inverclyde and Edinburgh, which includes Fife, Glasgow and Stirling; although electronics facilities outside this area may also be included in the term. The term has been in use since the 1980s. It does not technically represent a glen as it covers a much wider area than just one valley.
In electronic design a semiconductor intellectual property core, IP core, or IP block is a reusable unit of logic, cell, or integrated circuit layout design that is the intellectual property of one party. IP cores may be licensed to another party or can be owned and used by a single party alone. The term is derived from the licensing of the patent and/or source code copyright that exist in the design. IP cores can be used as building blocks within application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs or field-programmable gate array (FPGA) logic designs.
SigmaTel was a System On a Chip SoC, electronics and software company headquartered in Austin, Texas, that designed AV media player/recorder SoCs, reference circuit boards, SoC software development kits built around a custom cooperative kernel and all SoC device drivers including USB mass storage and AV decoder DSP, media player/recorder apps, and controller chips for multifunction peripherals. SigmaTel became Austin's largest IPO as of 2003 when it became publicly traded on NASDAQ. The company was driven by a talented mix of electrical and computer engineers plus other professionals with semiconductor industry experience in Silicon Hills, the number two IC design region in the United States, after Silicon Valley.
The transistor count is the number of transistors on an integrated circuit (IC). Transistor count is the most common measure of IC complexity, although there are caveats. For instance, the majority of transistors in modern microprocessors are contained in the cache memories, which consist mostly of the same memory cell circuits replicated many times. The rate at which transistor counts have increased generally follows Moore's law, which observed that the transistor count doubles approximately every two years. All microprocessor, graphics processing unit (GPU) and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices listed below are fabricated with MOSFET technology.
RF Micro Devices, was an American company that designed and manufactured high-performance radio frequency systems and solutions for applications that drive wireless and broadband communications. Headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, RFMD traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol RFMD. The Company was founded in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1991. RF Micro has 3500 employees, 1500 of them in Guilford County, North Carolina.
Silicon Hills is a nickname for the cluster of high-tech companies in the Austin metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Texas. The name is analogous to Silicon Valley, but refers to the hilly terrain on the west side of Austin. High tech industries in the area include enterprise software, semiconductors, corporate R&D, biotechnology, gaming, and a variety of startup companies.
Spreadtrum Communications, Inc., now Unisoc, is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Shanghai which produces chipsets for mobile phones.
The IEEE Robert N. Noyce Medal is a science award presented by the IEEE for outstanding contributions to the microelectronics industry. It is given to individuals who have demonstrated contributions in multiple areas including technology development, business development, industry leadership, development of technology policy, and standards development. The medal is named in honour of Robert N. Noyce, the founder of Intel Corporation. He was also renowned for his 1959 invention of the integrated circuit. The medal is funded by Intel Corporation and was first awarded in 2000.
Tokyo Electron Limited, or TEL, is a Japanese electronics and semiconductor company headquartered in Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
LSI Corporation was an American company based in San Jose, California which designed semiconductors and software that accelerate storage and networking in data centers, mobile networks and client computing.
Integrated Device Technology, Inc. is a publicly traded American corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, that designs, manufactures, and markets low-power, high-performance mixed-signal semiconductor solutions for the advanced communications, computing, and consumer industries. The company markets its products primarily to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Founded in 1980, the company began as a provider of complementary metal-oxide semiconductors (CMOS) for the communications business segment and computing business segments. The company is focused on three major areas: communications infrastructure, high-performance computing, and advanced power management.
Arteris, Inc. is a multinational technology firm that develops the on-chip interconnect fabric technology used in System-on-Chip (SoC) semiconductor designs for a variety of devices, particularly in mobile and consumer markets. The company specializes in the development and distribution of Network-on-Chip (NoC) interconnect Intellectual Property (IP) solutions. It is best known for its flagship product, Arteris FlexNoC, which is used in more than 60 percent of mobile and wireless SoC designs.
