Digital Integrated Circuits
Integrated circuits are commonly grouped into two different types: Analog/linear and digital/logic. The more sophisticated integrated circuits will combine digital and analog functions to form a chip. For example a digital chip may feature an analog/linear voltage regulator, while some analog chips may include a built in digital counter. By combining integrated circuits it is possible to improve a products performance, or to give it a new feature such as adding a time delay to a counter which is usually only possible with the use of timers.
The chips themselves can come in many different packages. Common chips used at the moment would be the different varieties of DIP ( dual in- line package) chips. Plastics and ceramics are the usual components of standard DIPs, although metals are also used, it is usually the case that manufacturers will replace the metal parts with the cheaper alternative plastic DIPS. These chips usually have between 4 and 100 pins.
Digital IC’s are composed of gates with these gates functioning like switches which turn on and off. A digital IC contains several gates and an integrated circuit that has two input gates is usually known as a logic gate.
If I increase the inputs and gates it can also increase the ability of the IC to perform logical operations. Because of this digital IC’s are often used in information transfers and exchanges. The integrated circuit itself is just a tiny component of common devices like computers but these devices rely on the efficency of the integrated circuits to function correctly.
