Different Types of Integrated Circuits | IC Types
Every electronic appliance we use in our day-to-day life,such as mobile phones, laptops, refrigerators, computers, televisions and all other electrical and electronic devices are manufactured with some simple or complex circuits. Electronic circuits are realized using multiple electrical and electronic components connected with each other by connecting wires or conducting wires for the flow of electric current through the multiple components of the circuit, such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, transistors, and so on.
Circuits can be classified into different types based on different criteria, such as, based on connections: series circuits and parallel circuits; based on the size and manufacturing process of circuit: integrated circuits and discrete circuits; and, based on signal used in circuit: analog circuits and digital circuits.
IntegratedCircuirts
Integrate circuit or IC or microchip or chip is a microscopic electronic circuitarray formedby the fabrication of various electrical and electronic components (resistors, capacitors, transistors, and so on) on a semiconductor material(silicon) wafer, which can perform operations similar to the large discrete electronic circuits made of discrete electronic components.
As all these arrays of components, microscopic circuits and semiconductor wafer material base are integrated together to form a single chip, hence, it is called as integrated circuit or integrated chip or microchip.
Electronic circuits are developed using individual or discrete electronic components with different sizes, such that the cost and size of these discrete circuits increase with the number of components used in the circuit. To conquer this negative aspect, the integrated circuit technology was developed – Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments developed the first IC or integrated circuit in the 1950s and thereafter, Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor solved some practical problems of thisintegrated circuit.
Different Types of Integrated Circuits
There are different types of ICs; classification of Integrated Circuits is done based on various criteria. A few types of ICs in a system are shown in the below figure with their names in a tree format.
Based on the intended application, the IC are classified as analog integrated circuits, digital integrated circuits and mixed integrated circuits.
The integrated circuits that operate only at a few defined levels instead of operating over all levels of signal amplitude are called as Digital ICs and these are designed by using multiple number of digital logic gates, multiplexers, flip flops and other electronic components of circuits.These logic gates work with binary input data or digital input data, such as 0 (low or false or logic 0) and 1 (high or true or logic 1).Digita Integrated Circuits
The above figure shows the steps involved in designing a typical digital integrated circuits.These digital ICs are frequently used in the computers, microprocessors, digital signal processors, computer networks and frequency counters. There are different types of digital ICs or types of digital integrated circuits, such as programmable ICs, memory chips, logic ICs, power management ICs and interface ICs.
Analog Integrated Circuits
The integrated circuits that operate over a continuous range of signal are called as Analog ICs. These are subdivided as linear Integrated Circuits (Linear ICs) and Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RF ICs). In fact, the relationship between the voltage and current maybe nonlinear in some cases over a long range of the continuous analog signal.
The frequently used analog IC is an operational amplifier or simply called as an op-amp, similar to the differential amplifier, but possesses a very high voltage gain. It consists of very less number of transistors compared to the digital ICs, and, for developing analog application specific integrated circuits (analog ASICs), computerized simulation tools are used.
Mixed Integrated Circuits
The integrated circuits that are obtained by the combination of analog and digital ICs on a single chip are called as Mixed ICs. These ICs functions as Digital to Analog converters, Analog to Digital converters (D/A and A/D converters) and clock/timing ICs. The circuit depicted in the above figure is an example of mixed integrated circuit which is a photograph of the 8 to 18 GHz self healing radar receiver.
This mixed-signal Systems-on-a-chip is a result of advances in the integration technology, which enabled to integrate digital, multiple analog and RF functions on a single chip.
General types of integrated circuits(ICs) include the following:
Logic Circuits
These ICs are designed using logic gates-that work with binary input and output (0 or 1). These are mostly used as decision makers. Based on the logic or truth table of the logic gates, all the logic gates connected in the IC give an output based on the circuit connected inside the IC- such that this output is used for performing a specific intended task. A few logic ICs are shown above.
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