What are the chip categories?

The English name of the chip is microchip, also known as microcircuit, microchip, and integrated circuit. It is actually the collective name for semiconductor component products. There are many classifications of chips, which can be divided into analog chips and digital chips according to different signal processing.

The English name of the chip is microchip, also known as microcircuit, microchip, and integrated circuit. It is actually the collective name for semiconductor component products. There are many classifications of chips, which can be divided into analog chips and digital chips according to different signal processing. To put it simply, analog chips use the amplification function of transistors, while digital analog chips use the switching function of crystals. Specifically, analog chips are used to generate, amplify and process various analog signals, with many types, including analog-to-digital conversion chips (ADC), amplifier chips, power management chips, PLL, etc.

The difficulty in analog chip design is that there are too many non-ideal effects, which requires solid basic knowledge and rich experience, such as small signal analysis, time domain and frequency domain analysis, etc. In contrast, digital chips are used to generate, amplify and process various digital signals. Digital chips generally perform logical operations. CPUs, memory chips and DSP chips are all digital chips. The difficulty of digital chip design lies in the large scale of the chip and the complex process requirements, so it usually requires collaborative development by multiple teams.

There are many ways to classify integrated circuits. According to whether the circuit is analog or digital, it can be divided into: analog integrated circuits, digital integrated circuits and mixed-signal integrated circuits (analog and digital on one chip).

Digital integrated circuits can contain anything from thousands to millions of logic gates, flip-flops, multiplexers and other circuits spread across a few square millimeters. The small size of these circuits allows for higher speeds, lower power consumption (see Low Power Design) and lower manufacturing costs compared to board-level integration. These digital ICs, represented by microprocessors, digital signal processors and microcontrollers, use binary in their work and process 1 and 0 signals.

Analog integrated circuits, such as sensors, power control circuits and operational amplifiers, process analog signals. Complete the functions of amplification, filtering, demodulation, mixing, etc. By using analog integrated circuits designed by experts with good characteristics, the burden of circuit designers is relieved, and there is no need to start from the basic transistor design.

Integrated circuits can integrate analog and digital circuits on a single chip to make devices such as analog-to-digital converters and digital-to-analog converters. This circuit offers smaller size and lower cost, but care must be taken regarding signal collisions.

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