computer chip

computer chip, integrated circuit or small wafer of semiconductor material embedded with integrated circuitry. Chips comprise the processing and memory units of the modern digital computer (see microprocessor; RAM). Chip making is extremely precise and is usually done in a “clean room,” since even microscopic contamination could render a chip defective. As transistor components shrank, the number per chip doubled about every 18 months (a phenomenon known as Moore’s law), from a few thousand in 1971 (Intel Corp.’s first chip) to more than 10 billion in 2016. Nanotechnology made transistors even smaller and chips correspondingly more powerful as the technology advanced.