- An integrated circuit (IC) (or microchip or simply chip) is a device that contains many logic gates on a single chip of silicon
- ICs have external electrical contact points called pins
- A package is a plastic or ceramic case that holds the IC and connects the pins to the outside world
- A dual in-line package (DIP) is a package with two parallel rows of pins
- very-large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an IC by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip.
- A discrete component is an electronic device containing only a single element, such as a transistor or a resistor