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A computer chip, also called an integrated circuit, monolithic integrated circuit, IC, chip, or microchip is an integrated circuit or a wafer of semiconductor material embedded with integrated circuitry. Computer chips incorporate the memory and processing units of modern digital computers. Integrated circuits have been rapidly adopted in place of discrete transistors in computers, mobile phones, and digital home appliances.

Computer chips are usually made in a so-called “clean room” because even a small amount of contamination can result in a defective chip. Integrated circuits are printed as a unit using photolithography rather than being constructed by hand, one transistor at a time like they were in the 1960s. The number of transistors on each computer chip has doubled around every 18 months as transistor components have become smaller (this phenomenon is called Moore’s Law). (A transistor is a semiconductor device that amplifies or switches electronic signals and electric power). Thanks to Moore’s Law, computer chips in the 2000s include thousands of times the speed and millions of times the capacity of computer chips made during the 1970s. Computer chips in the 2000s may be only the size of a human fingernail but possess billions of transistors.

One of the first attempts at combining several components into one device (as integrated circuits do) was the 1920s Loewe 3nF vacuum tube. The vacuum tube was designed to avoid a German radio receiver tax. In 1959, the first monolithic integrated circuit chip was designed by Robert Noyce and fabricated from silicon. Between 1961 and 1965, NASA’s Apollo space program was the largest single consumer of integrated circuit chips.