Integrated circuits

An integrated circuit (IC) is a single unit that comprises several logic gates designed for the easy construction of Digital_circuits. The terms “integrated circuit” and “chip” are often used interchangeably.

An IC puts the gates on a single piece of silicon that has electrical contact points called pins. There are two types of pins on an IC: input pins and output pins. Input pins are used to receive signals from other components in the circuit, while output pins are used to send signals to other components. The function of a pin is determined by the connection it has to the rest of the circuit and the type of signal it is intended to transmit or receive.

The type we will look at are called dual in-line packages (DIPs). They are rectangular wth two parallel rows of pins. The pins make it easy to connect DIPs to a breadboard.

An integrated circuit and its use on a breadboard:

History of Computing (Swade, 2022 )
- The invention of integrated_circuits
- integrated_circuits
Logic gates
- Logic gates are the basic building blocks of digital computing. A logic gate is an electrical circuit that has one or more than one input and only one output. The input and output points of the gate are pins The input controls the output and the logic determining which types of input (on/off) lead to specific outputs (on/off) is isomorphic with the truth-conditions of the Truth-functional_connectives specifiable in terms of Truth-tables.
- An example of a composite gate would be a three-way AND. An AND with three inputs rather than the standard two that furnish the elementary AND gate. This gate would output 1 when all three gates have the value 1 and 0 otherwise. Adders and latche>s whilst being integrated circuits are also, technically speaking, composite gates.
Hardware Description Language
- An HDL is a declarative programming language used to describe the behaviour or structure of digital circuits. They are used to simulate the circuit and check its response.
- In an HDL program we distinguish internal pins along with the standard input and output pins. At the level of the interface, we are concerned only with input and output pins (in the example program these are a, b and out). It is at the level of the implementation that internal pins are encountered. In the example these are the connections between, e.g. the AND and NOT gates such as And (a=a, b-notb, out=w1). This means the AND gate is receiving through its a pin the input a value and through its b pin the value of b inverted by a NOT. out is the value that is computed based on the input pins of a and b.