Chat with our AI personalities
when solder IC chips on printed circuit cards
The number of transistors in a defined square area on an IC chip.
MC1496-AM modulator and demodulator chip -- shark
a tab on a metal case or a dot on a molded plastic case is typical.
An IC or integrated circuit consists of a chip ("die") and plastic or ceramic packaging to protect the die from mechanical and (some) electrical damage. An IC with more than one die is usually called a "hybrid" IC. A "monolithic" IC is just a plain old one-die IC, but it implies that functions from a number of ICs have been incorporated into that one IC. One form of monolithic IC is where the functions of a powerful graphics processor is put on the same die as a CPU. An SOC ("System On a Chip") is another trend in monolithic ICs. "Monolithic" is something of a transitional term. Floating point, memory management, and processing units all used to to be on separate ICs. Now they are all on the same IC, but we don't call them "monolithic" any more.