What is a Computer Chip?
A small piece of semiconducting material (usually silicon) on which an integrated circuit is embedded. A typical chip is less than -square inches and can contain millions of electronic components (transistors). Computers consist of many chips placed on electronic boards called printed circuit boards.
There are different types of chips. For example, CPU chips (also called microprocessors) contain an entire processing unit, whereas memory chips contain blank memory.
Chips come in a variety of packages. The three most common are:
In addition to these types of chips, there are also single in-line memory modules (SIMMs), which consist of up to nine chips packaged as a single unit.
