Semiconductors, Transistors, and Gates

Notes

• A transistor is an electronic switch which either creates or breaks a connection along a wire.
• Semiconductor technology allows one to make transistors which are small enough to pack hundreds of millions of them onto a single computer chip.
• By combining transistors one can create logic gates and memory circuits.
• By combining logic gates and memory circuits one can create CPUs and Memory chips.

The main ideas in the lecture are covered in sections 1,2, and 3 of the online ChipWise VLSI Tutor, which is hosted by The ECAD Laboratory, University of Kent at Canterbury Canterbury, Kent, UK

Other related links:

• semiconductor links
• The Kraken a 16-bit RISC Microprocessor student project from Stanford University.
• Chip shots Gallery at Florida State University
• Building a Transistor an applet which is part of the Florida State University collection of Interactive Java Tutorials on Electricity and Magnetism.
• a CMOS Technology Demonstration a page of applets developed at Uni Hamburg, Technische Grundlagen der INformatik, Germany
• NYU Computer Architecture Class Notes which show how to build a CPU from gates