Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
increasing overall performance.
Figure 1.3. Intel Tri-Gate transistor using a fin-shaped source/drain for more surface area
between the source and gate.
Integrated Circuits
The third generation of modern computers is known for using integrated circuits instead of individual
transistors. Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild are both credited with
having invented the
integrated circuit (IC)
in 1958 and 1959. An IC is a semiconductor circuit that
contains multiple components on the same base (or substrate material), which are usually
interconnected without wires. The first prototype IC constructed by Kilby at TI in 1958 contained
only one transistor, several resistors, and a capacitor on a single slab of germanium, and it featured
fine gold “flying wires” to interconnect them. However, because the flying wires had to be
individually attached, this type of design was not practical to manufacture. By comparison, Noyce
patented the “planar” IC design in 1959, where all the components are diffused in or etched on a
silicon base, including a layer of aluminum metal interconnects. In 1960, Fairchild constructed the
first planar IC, consisting of a flip-flop circuit with four transistors and five resistors on a circular
die only about 20mm
2
in size. By comparison, the Intel Core i7 quad-core processor based on the
22nm Ivy Bridge microarchitecture incorporates 1.4 billion transistors (and numerous other
components) on a single 160mm
2
die!
History of the PC
