1. Integrated Circuits: The Dominator of Electronics
The true revolution in electronic world began when the first integrated circuit was created.
Integrated circuits consist of a set of electronic circuits etched on one plate of silicone. They can
be made very compact so that one IC would consist of billions of transistors and diodes yet still
be the size of a fingernail.
The answer to the question “How does an IC chip work?” vastly varies because there are so
many IC chips that are intended to perform many different tasks. An IC chip designed to work
as an oscillator will be operating in a very different way from an IC designed to work as a
memory element in a circuit. So providing a general answer to the so asked question is not
easy. An integrated circuit is created by taking a single piece of semiconductor and overlaying
the metal parts necessary for connecting different elements of the circuitry on top of it. That
means an integrated circuit works as groups of semiconductor devices, mainly transistors
designed so that after the combination is brought in to practice it would perform a specific task.
In order to do this planar transistors have to be produced. This is done by etching the
components directly on to a semiconductor substrate.
Let’s take an example to understand this transistor grouping concept. If it is required to create a
buffer that accepts a stream of data and stores it until it is called for by a micro controller, many
transistors are combined in a way that functionally creates a set of J-K flip flops or similar
memory elements and a counter is created to point out where the next bit of data is stored and
also peripheral circuitry is included to read and clear the data whenever requested. It’s all
performed at the sub-miniature level and in such a way as to allow it all to be on a single chip.
Different IC chips will have different applications and requirements and as such will be
designed in a completely different way with different internal circuitry. Technology behind an IC
chip is not simple even though application of the same chip might seem simpler, so in order to
fully understand how an IC chip works quite a bit of education in mathematics, physics and
electronics. They are considered as the most highly evolved electronic species to date.
Testing an IC chip is also not an easy task since there are countless different chips and in order
to test a certain chip person has to understand what the chip is intended to do and the pin out
pattern of the chip. The most common approach is to use a logic probe and check whether the
chip operates correctly according to the truth table in the data sheet. This can be considered as
the simplest method and it will be useful to identify the “stuck” lines. The next preferred
method will be using a multi meter since it appears to be the next simplest method. However in
order to do that also person has to have a good understanding of the chip. Using an IC tester or
a logic analyzer will not be as easy as above steps since they both are quite expensive devices
and also only a handful of people understand how to properly use it. Some heavy programming

2. might be required in order to configure the equipment to test the specific chip. By choosing
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