ABSTRACT
Considerable cost savings can be made by
manufacturing all of the components required for
a particular circuit function on one small slice of
semiconductor material (usually silicon). The
resulting integrated circuit may contain as few
as 10 or more than 100,000 active devices
(transistors and diodes). With the exception of a
few specialised applications (such as
amplification at high power levels) integrated
circuits have largely rendered conventional
circuits (i.e. those based on discrete components
such as individually packaged resistors, diodes
and transistors) obsolete.
