1948, William Shockley of Bell Laboratories and two colleagues invented the transistor, which can replace the vacuum tube to amplify electronic signals, and make electronic equipment develop in the direction of light change and high efficiency. Therefore, shockley is known as the "father of transistors" and won the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics. This is a major innovation in electronic technology. Jack kilby, 24, has just obtained a bachelor's degree in electronic engineering from the University of Illinois. He said in his self-report: "In college, most of my courses were about electricity, but because of my interest in electronic technology as a child, I also took some courses on electron tube technology. I graduated from 1947, which happened to be the year before Bell Labs announced the invention of the transistor, which means that my electron tube technology course will be completely invalid. "
But the problem is not completely solved, and the electronic equipment assembled by transistors is still too heavy. Obviously, it is still an unreachable dream for individuals to own computers.
Technology is always driven by dreams. 1952, G.W.A. Dammer of the British Radar Research Institute first put forward the idea of integrated circuits: all the transistors, diodes and other components needed for electronic circuits are made on a semiconductor chip. Although we can't see the influence of this idea on jack kilby from the self-report, we can also feel that the concept of microelectronic technology is coming out of the engineers' thinking.
The world's first integrated circuit was born.
From 65438 to 0947, jack kilby, a graduate of the University of Illinois, found a job in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with a strong interest in electronic technology, making parts for radios, televisions and hearing AIDS for an electronic equipment supplier. In his spare time, he attended evening classes for the Master of Electronic Engineering at the University of Wisconsin. Of course, the double pressure of work and class is a challenge for kilby, but he said, "It can be done and it is really worth the effort."
After getting his master's degree, kilby and his wife moved to Dallas, Texas, and worked for Texas Instruments, because it was the only company that allowed him to spend almost all his time on the miniaturization of electronic equipment, which provided him with a lot of time and good experimental conditions. Kilby, who is gentle and quiet by nature, is 6 feet 6 inches tall and is called "gentle giant" by his assistants and friends. It is this giant who is not good at expressing that has brewed a giant's idea.
At that time, Texas Instruments had a tradition that employees could enjoy a two-week long vacation in hot August. However, kilby, who just arrived here, missed the long vacation and had to stay in the empty workshop to study alone. During this period, he gradually formed a genius idea: resistors and capacitors (passive components) can be made of the same materials as transistors (active devices). In addition, because all components can be made of the same material, these components can be made of the same material first, and then connected with each other to form a complete circuit. He chose semiconductor silicon.
"I sat at my desk and seemed to stay a little later than usual." In an interview with 1980, he recalled, "The whole idea actually took shape on the same day, and then I sorted out all the ideas and drew some design drawings in my notebook. When the supervisor comes back, I will show him these design drawings. Although some people were slightly skeptical at that time, they basically understood the importance of this design. "
So, we returned to the scene at the beginning of the article. On that day, the director of the company came to the laboratory to connect the test line with the giant. The experiment was successful. Texas Instruments soon announced that they had invented the integrated circuit, and kilby applied for a patent for it.
The significance of the invention of integrated circuits;
Created the silicon age
He probably didn't really realize the value of this invention at that time. After winning the Nobel Prize, he said, "I know that the integrated circuit I invented is very important to the electronics industry, but I never thought that it would be so widely used today."
Integrated circuits have replaced transistors, paving the way for developing various functions of electronic products and greatly reducing costs, and the third generation of electronic equipment has since entered the stage. Its birth made it possible for microprocessors to appear, and also made computers a daily tool that ordinary people can get close to. The application of integrated technology has spawned more convenient and quick electronic products, such as the common hand-held electronic calculator, which is a new invention of kilby after integrated circuits. Until today, silicon material is still the main material of our electronic devices. So in 2000, 42 years after the advent of integrated circuits, people finally realized the value of him and his invention, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. The Nobel Committee once commented on kilby: "It laid the foundation of modern information technology".
1959, Robert royce of Fairchild semiconductor applied for a more complex silicon integrated circuit, and immediately put it into the commercial field. But kilby applied for the patent first, so Royce was considered as the co-inventor of the integrated circuit. Royce died on 1990 and missed the Nobel Prize.
Jack kilby is very modest. He has more than 60 patents in his life, but in his acceptance speech, he said: "My work may have introduced a new perspective of circuit components and opened up a new field. Most of the achievements since then have nothing to do with my work. "
Historical changes of integrated circuits;
1September, 958 12, kilby developed the world's first integrated circuit, successfully realized the idea of integrating electronic devices on a piece of semiconductor material, and passed the inspection of the senior management of Texas Instruments. Remember, on this day, integrated circuits replaced transistors, paving the way for the development of various functions of electronic products, greatly reducing the cost, making it possible for microprocessors to appear, creating a new era in the history of electronic technology, and making it possible for all electronic products that we are used to now.
Looking back on the development of integrated circuits, we can see that the phrase "from circuit integration to system integration" is the best summary of the development process of IC products from small-scale integrated circuits (SSI) to today's very large-scale integrated circuits (ULSI), that is, the development of the whole integrated circuit products has changed from the traditional system level to the system level. In this historical process, in order to adapt to the development of technology and the demand of the market, the industrial structure of the world integrated circuit industry has undergone three changes.
The first transformation: the initial stage of the development of integrated circuit industry dominated by processing and manufacturing.
In 1970s, the mainstream products of integrated circuits were microprocessors, memories and standard general logic circuits. During this period, integrated circuit manufacturers (IDM) played a major role in the integrated circuit market, and integrated circuit design only existed as a subsidiary department. At this time, integrated circuit design is closely related to semiconductor technology. IC design is mainly manual, and CAD system is only used for data processing and graphic programming. The integrated circuit industry is only in the primary production-oriented stage.
The second revolution: the rise of foundry and IC design companies. In 1980s, the mainstream products of integrated circuits were microprocessor (MPU), microcontroller (MCU) and application specific integrated circuit (ASIC). At this time, the combination of Fabless and OEM without production line began to become a new model for the development of integrated circuit industry.
With the wide application and popularization of microprocessors and PCs (especially in communication, industrial control, consumer electronics and other fields), the integrated circuit industry has begun to enter a customer-oriented stage. On the one hand, IC with standardized functions can hardly meet customers' requirements for system cost and reliability. At the same time, the customers of the whole machine demand to continuously improve the integration of IC, improve the confidentiality, reduce the chip area, reduce the system volume, reduce the cost and improve the cost performance of products, thus enhancing the competitiveness of products and gaining more market share and more lucrative profits. On the other hand, due to the progress of integrated circuit micromachining technology, it is possible to hardware the software. In order to improve the speed of the system and simplify the program, ASIC with various hardware structures, such as gate array, programmable logic device (including FPGA), standard cell and fully customized circuit, appeared, accounting for 12% of the total IC sales. Thirdly, with the development of EDA tools (electronic design automation tools), PCB design methods are introduced into ic design, such as the concept of library, process simulation parameters and their simulation concepts, and the design begins to enter the abstract stage, so that the design process can exist independently of the production process. Seeing the market and development prospect of ASIC, far-sighted machine manufacturers and entrepreneurs, including venture capital funds (VC), began to set up professional design companies and IC design departments, and fabless integrated circuit design companies or design departments without production lines were established and developed rapidly. At the same time, it also led to the rise of standard manufacturing lines. The first foundry in the world is Taiwan Province Integrated Circuit Company, which was established in 1987. Its founder, Zhang Zhongmou, is also called "the father of wafer processing".
The Third Transformation: Integrated Circuit Industry with Four Industries Separated In the 1990s, with the rise of the Internet, the integrated circuit industry entered an advanced stage of competition-oriented, and the international competition changed from the original resource competition and price competition to talent knowledge competition and capital-intensive competition. The competition mode of expanding equipment investment with DRAM as the center has become a thing of the past. For example, in 1990, the United States, represented by Intel, voluntarily abandoned the DRAM market, engaged in CPU, made major structural adjustments to the semiconductor industry, and regained the world's semiconductor hegemony. This makes people realize that the increasingly huge integrated circuit industry system is not conducive to the development of the entire integrated circuit industry. Only "division of labor" can be refined and "integration" can become an advantage. As a result, the highly specialized industrial structure of integrated circuits has become a trend, and the independent situation of design industry, manufacturing industry, packaging industry and testing industry has begun to take shape (as shown in the following figure). In recent years, the development of global integrated circuit industry has increasingly shown the advantages of this structure. For example, the integrated circuit industry in Taiwan Province Province is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises, forming a highly differentiated industrial structure. Therefore, since 1996, affected by the Asian economic crisis, the global semiconductor industry has overcapacity and its benefits have declined, while the integrated circuit design industry has achieved sustained growth.
Especially in 1996, 1997 and 1998, the price of DRAM fell, and MPU fell for three years. The growth rate of the world semiconductor industry has been far lower than the previous growth value 17%. If we rely on high-input upgrading technology, pursue large-size silicon wafers and micromachining, reduce costs, and promote its growth from mass production, it will be unsustainable. And IC design enterprises are closer to and understand the market, and directly promote the upgrading of electronic systems through innovative development of high value-added products; At the same time, gain profits from innovation, accumulate capital on the basis of rapid and coordinated development, and drive the renewal and new investment of semiconductor equipment; As the "leader" of the integrated circuit industry, the integrated circuit design industry has injected new impetus and vitality into the growth of the entire integrated circuit industry.