- Transistors were a tremendous breakthrough in advancing the computer.
- However no one could predict that thousands even now millions of transistors (circuits) could be compacted in such a small space.
- The integrated circuit, or as it is sometimes referred to as semiconductor chip, packs a huge number of transistors onto a single wafer of silicon.
- Robert Noyce of Fairchild Corporation and Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments independently discovered the amazing attributes of integrated circuits.
- Placing such large numbers of transistors on a single chip vastly increased the power of a single computer and lowered its cost considerably.
- Since the invention of integrated circuits, the number of transistors that can be placed on a single chip has doubled every two years, shrinking both the size and cost of computers even further and further enhancing its power.
- Most electronic devices today use some form of integrated circuits placed on printed circuit boards-- thin pieces of bakelite or fiberglass that have electrical connections etched onto them -- sometimes called a mother board.
- These third generation computers could carry out instructions in billionths of a second.
- The size of these machines dropped to the size of small file cabinets. Yet, the single biggest advancement in the computer era was yet to be discovered
written by : Siti Nooraina Mohd Jamal..
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