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 ten 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.
