Computer Engineering and Integrated Circuits

Computer Engineering and Integrated Circuits

Integration means combining functionalities, or components together. Today we see that computer sizes reduced from large room size vacuum tube computers to easily affordable portable laptops and even pocket sized small processing units. The secret behind this reduction in size is the power of semiconductors and integration technologies of computer engineering. First integrated circuit (IC) had only 10 transistors, resistors, and capacitors. This number increased to hundreds, then thousands and today’s microprocessor IC integrates billions of transistors and other components. It is the magic of computer engineering advances that the world moved to this level of integration called Very Large Scale Integration (VLISI) designs.