What Does Chip Mean?
In electronics, a chip is comprised of semiconductor material cut from a larger wafer of material that is only a few millimeters on one side. On this chip, a transistor or integrated circuit may be etched but only occupy one-thousandth of an inch of the chip’s surface.
The terms chip, microchip, integrated circuit (IC) and silicon chip are synonymous.
Techopedia Explains Chip
Most of a chip’s integrated circuits contain digital logic functions. Some are analog-only, while others are mixed-mode analog and digital. Digital chips are used for computer processors, memory and other logic and information processing functions.
A single chip may contain a handful or thousands of transistors, and measure only 1/16 square inch x 1/30 square inch in thickness. Larger, postage stamp-sized chips may contain millions of transistors. An entire computer may reside on one single chip (i.e., RAM, ROM, clock, the I/O control unit and CPU).
