In the field of mordern day electronics and computer hardware systems, the names IC, Chip, and processor are very often used. But do they really mean the same thing? Are they different from each other? or Is there any specific situation you can interchange the names? Let find out.
Integrated Circuit: An Integrated circuit (Or simply IC) is an electronic component that is formed by an interconnection of series of other electronic components and circuits, fabricated as a single unit and usually laid on a semiconducting waver e.g silicon.
The constituent of an IC can contain as much more than thousands to millions of electronic components, like resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors etc, all assembled together and arranged in series of mini circuits like flip flops, logic gates, Op-amps etc.
The revolution of integrated circuits paved way for digital electronics and modern technology because multiple millions of electronic component can be made so tiny that it can be fabricated into just one flat component. Integrated circuit are usually embedded on a chip of silicon material, sometimes known as silicon wafers.
Microchip: The word "chip", is used simply to denote a small piece or a small slice of something, be it a potato chip, an ice chip or (in the case of electronics) a silicon chip. So when ICs are sometimes nicknamed as microchip or chip, it simply because they are build on a small piece(or a small chip) of a semiconductor material, called silicon wafers. Ordinary chips are different from microchips. From the prefix "micro", that means they are very tiny categories of electronic chips.
Note that the silicon wafers are not the IC packages themselves. To be precise, the silicon wafers is a material used to fabricate the constituent of the IC i.e the transistors and resistors. The black plastic packages just form an enclosure to protect the main constituent of the IC from excessive heat. So if someone refer to the whole package as chip, or IC, it all means the same thing. It simply a collection of different miniaturized microelectronic component, embedded on a chip(small piece) of silicon wafers.
Processor: The processor or CPU(central processing unit) or microprocessor is the brain of every digital device. It is a microelectronic chip(or IC) that resides in a computer and some other digital devices and it responsible for processing data in form of logic gates and carrying out operational instructions. The processor controls other part of the circuits, and does other basic mathmatical calculations in form of binary codes( 0s and 1s).
A processor can contain up to 2billion MOSFETs, arranged in order of flipflop circuits, logic gates, NAND and NOR gates, used to perform powerful computations. In the case of modern day technology, a single processor can be made up of multiply cores which all work together to operate and carry out powerful calculations at a very high speed. That is why in some computers or even smartphones, it will be specified that it uses a dual core or a quad core processor.
So a processor is a class of integrated circuit that serves as the control unit of other part of the circuitry. It is the most critical section in a mother board and it act as the brain of the any digital device because it's responsible for carrying out data processing and other basic computations which makes the device smart. There are so many other ICs in a digital circuits that perform other functions other than computations such as the flash ICs, used as memory storage device, the RAM, the power IC, oscillator ICs etc but they do not act as the brain of the device. Since the processor is just a type of integrated circuit, therefore, all processors are ICs but not all ICs are processors because not all ICs act as the brain of a computer.
SUMMARY
An Integrated Circuit (IC) can come in classes of memory chip, configuration chip, logic chip or microprocessor chip. It just an assembly of various electronic component fabricated as one unit.
A Chip or microchip is also a term given to an IC with respect to the fact that it is constructed with a small piece(or a small chip) of a semiconductor material called 'silicon wafers'.
A processor is a type of integrated circuit that act as the brain of digital electronic devices. It carries out data processing in form of binary codes. And just as all cars are motor vehicles, but not all motor vehicles are cars, so all microprocessors are integrated circuits, but not all integrated circuit are processors.
FACT - Advancement in science today has even made it possible to implant microelectronic chips into the body of living things like humans and animals, sometimes for health issues or for research and discoveries. For example, a very tiny piece of microchip can be implanted into a human body, to monitor the action of blood cells. Or a tracker chip can be implanted on an animal skin to track it behaviour and immigration factors.
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