The building blocks of technology
It’s hard to imagine a world without microchips. They’re at the heart of the devices that we use to work, travel, stay fit and entertain ourselves – from cars to smartphones and from MRI scanners to industrial robots and data centers.
Microchips are everywhere. In 2021, semiconductor unit sales reached a record 1.15 trillion-unit shipments, and in 2022, global semiconductor industry sales topped €573.5 billion. By delivering new functionalities, better performance and lower cost with each generation, advances in chips have spawned new products and transformed industries.
*Data source: WSTS
What’s a microchip?
A microchip (also called a chip, a computer chip, an integrated circuit or IC) is a set of electronic circuits on a small flat piece of silicon. On the chip, transistors act as miniature electrical switches that can turn a current on or off. The pattern of tiny switches is created on the silicon wafer by adding and removing materials to form a multilayered latticework of interconnected shapes.
Digital gold
Silicon is the material of choice in the chip industry. Unlike the metals normally used to conduct electrical currents, silicon is a ‘semiconductor’, meaning that its conductive properties can be increased by mixing it with other materials such as phosphorus or boron. This makes it possible to turn an electrical current on or off.
The good news is that it’s everywhere! Silicon is made from sand, and it is the second most abundant element on earth after oxygen. Silicon wafers are made using a type of sand called silica sand, which is made of silicon dioxide. The sand is melted and cast in the form of a large cylinder called an ‘ingot’. This ingot is then sliced into thin wafers.
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‘Flavors’ of chips
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ASICs are simple, single-purpose chips used for performing repetitive processing routines such as scanning a barcode.
SoCs are essentially integrator chips. They are a relatively new type of chip that combines many chips and circuits in a single chip and may integrate things such as graphics, audio, camera, video and Wi-Fi.
Computing power
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Chips enable applications such as virtual reality and on-device artificial intelligence (AI) as well as gains in data transfer such as 5G connectivity, and they’re also behind algorithms such as those used in deep learning.
