Free Term Paper On Computer Chips

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Abstract:

The paper discusses the description of computer chip as a physical product, what it is used for and how important it is to its function. Then there is a discussion about how has the product evolved over time ever since its inception. A computer chip is an artful work of engineering and product designing as has been crafted with great care. Then the paper describes how the product actually works; it is a constituent of circuits. Then the paper discusses the future of the product and the expected developments in its design, engineering and application.

Introduction

A computer chip or a monolithic integrated circuit is quite simply a combination of electronic circuits on a single plate, the plate being very small and made of a material that is a semiconductor (usually silicon). As compared to a discrete circuit these circuits are a lot smaller in size. A kind of circuit that has all or some of the circuit essentials connected in a way that they can’t be separated so that it may be regarded as inseparable from creation and import, export can be called a computer circuit. A normal computer chip is about less than a square inch, and it may contain more than a million transistors in itself. These are usually placed on electronic boards. This chip also has further parts inside. The modern computer chip is an immensely complicated thing which took a tremendous amount of work from people numbering near thousands to create and enhance it to the thing it is today. These computer chips were made possible due to the discovery of experiments that semiconductor devices can function in the same way as vacuum tubes do. Also, the advancement in the semiconductor device fabrication technology helped in the development of these computer circuits.

Product Description:

Most people have got no idea what is inside their computer chips. Here is an idea of what it might be like on the inside. The chip itself is not big at all, considering the functions it does it seems a lot bigger in size, but it is roughly a square inch. Let’s take a common modern chip as an example; it has been created using a 20 or 22 nm process, in which every single transistor is approximately measured up to 30 nanometers square. Just one cell of an SRAM containing around 6 transistors is measured to about 0.1 micrometers square or if a person prefers 100 nanometers square. This way if a person slices off a small shard of a human hair, a person can get around 500 SRAM cells and 3000 transistors. The fact that such a small thing performs so many tasks, it is very surprising.

History of development:

The first man to develop a computer circuit or an integrated circuit was a German engineer Wener Jacobi in the 1940’s (specifically 1949). This German engineer filed an official document for a chip that was somewhat like a computer chip. It was basically a device that amplified the conductivity of an object. This device showed five transistors in a stage 3 arrangement of an amplifier on a common substrate. Though he worked very hard, no instant use of his product was ever reported. The thought of an integrated circuit was first imagined by a radar scientist who worked for the British ministry of defense, Royal Radar Establishment, Geoffrey W.A Dummer. But, his idea was no accepted publically by anyone and his attempt to build a circuit was not successful. The first person who actually created a computer chip was Jack Kilby in 1958. Kilby won the Nobel Prize for his work.

Design:

Monocrystalline silicon is the basic stratum used in the computer chip these days. This element was really hard to use as it took decades for chemists to produce crystals without any single defect in the structure of their crystalline which later affected in the semiconducting materials. The computer chips with semiconducting properties have been fabricated in a certain process in which the materials are layered. This process includes around three steps that are very important, imaging, etching and deposition in no particular order. These main steps are enhanced by cleaning and doping. These computer chips have a lot of layers that overlap each other, every one of these layers is distinct by photolithography and are usually shown in separate colors. Every component of this chip is created by a specific and different combination of the layers. Meandering stripes having different lengths are used to create resistors on the chip on some occasions, even though most of the circuits created by logic do not need any sort of resistors. A random access memory or a RAM is the most common type of a computer chip. The structures of the chips have remained the same over the course of years, but the size has been reduced by a lot of margins. The layers are now much thinner, and the width of the device is actually larger than the layers. The computer chip is also packed; the die is accumulated upside down and joins the package balls to the printed circuit by a package substrate in place of wires. There is not much labeling done on these computer chips but those which are large enough to actually get some labeling done get their logo or the name of the company with the serial number on them along with the part production batch number.

Principle of operation:

Any type of system in the world of today works because of a simple and good idea. The simpler the element that is on top, the more complex thing is created. The modern computer chip can be subdivided into further smaller parts. These parts are logic gates, devices, Circuits, Simple logic Blocks, software, processor. Firstly, what are logic gates? Logic gates are simple a process that takes a number of inputs and will give an output based on the specific rule. Now, software, it is simply said to be the process of solving problems given by the user and the programs used by the computer. The circuits are basically hardware for the transfer of information, input and output, in the form of electricity. A processor processes the given information, most likely a problem, and gives an output. The chip also contains caches in the form of a RAM, which provides better speed.

Future:

The future of computer chips is beginning now. Keeping in mind the way a human brain works, scientists have developed a computer chip that does not require a lot of power (just as much as a regular hearing aid) and would exceed the calculations done by the supercomputers of the modern age. This computer chip was named as TrueNorth, and it was developed by some expert researchers at IBM. This chip attempts to work just like the way a human brain does, recognizing patterns, and it relies on transistors that are interconnected densely just like the neural networks of a brain. This chip has an electronic neuron that has the ability to send signals to others when a kind of data passes a kind of entrance. This simple chip may have the ability to identify that a certain woman attempts to pick her purse up, simple tasks that humans do.

References

Markoff, J. (Aug 7, 2014). IBM Develops a New Chip That Functions Like a Brain. Retrieved 21 March 2015, from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/science/new-computer-chip-is-designed- to-work-like-the-brain.html?_r=1
Quora. (2009). SHARE QUESTION TwitterFacebookGoogle+ RELATED TOPICS Science, Engineering, and Technology Electronics Computers How does a computer chip work?. Retrieved 21 March 2015, from http://www.quora.com/How-does-a-computer-chip-work