Note: The following are terms courtesy of the Semiconductor Industry Association's glossary. For more, visit them at www.sia-online.org.

3g

Industry term for third-generation wireless mobile communications networks.

56Kbps

The fastest speed modem that will work over a conventional dial-up phone line. Due to the FCC's mandated power limits, the maximum transmission speed of a 56K modem is usually only 53Kbps. Typical achieved transmission speeds average between 40Kbps and 46Kbps depending upon computer hardware, software, and line conditions.

A/D or DC

Analog-to-Digital Converter. This device is what all digital imaging systems use to get real-world pictures from a TV camera, for example, into a computer.

Analog Signals

Analog is a continuous signal, measuring features that are difficult to break into digital components, such as pressure, temperature, voltage, current, and air and water-flow. The circuits are used in products that involve sound (radios, TVs) and pressure (automotive air bags, anti-lock brakes).

Angstrom

One ten-billionth of a meter. Some chip layers are only 100 angstroms thick.

Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC)

Designed to suit a customer's particular requirement, as opposed to DRAMs or microprocessors, which are general-purpose semiconductors.

Application-Specific Standard Products (ASSP)

An integrated circuit that performs functions for a single application.

Assembly

A step in semiconductor manufacturing in which the chip (die) is either encased in a plastic, ceramic, or other package or assembled directly on a printed circuit board.

Bandwidth

An analog measure derived from the difference between the highest and lowest frequency on a carrier wave. Also used to describe the amount of data that can be sent through a given communications circuit.

Binary

Characteristic of having only two states, such as current on and current off. The binary number system uses only ones and zeros.

Bit

Binary digit. The basic unit of all digital communications. A bit is a "1" or "0" in a binary language.

Bluetooth

A wireless Personal Area Network (PAN) technology from the Bluetooth™ Special Interest Group, founded in 1998 by Ericsson, TBM, Intel, Nokia, and Toshiba. It is an open standard for short-range transmission of digital voice and data between mobile and desktop devices.

Broadband

Originally described the frequency bandwidth of analog circuits. The term has evolved to specify 56 KBps, then 1.5 Mbps capability.

Byte

A data unit of eight bits.

Cable

A term that refers to any of a number of wires or wire groups capable of carrying voice or data transmissions.

Chip

An individual integrated circuit built in a tiny, layered rectangle or square on a silicon wafer.

Circuit Board

Same as printed circuit board. A board with microprocessors, transistors, and other electronic components. Also called a circuit card.

Cleanroom

The sterile rooms where chips are fabricated. The air in these rooms is thousands of times cleaner than in a typical hospital operating room.

Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)

Also called Spread Spectrum, a term for a form of digital spread spectrum cellular phone service that assigns a code to all speech bits, sends a scrambled transmission of the encoded speech over the air, and reassembles the speech into its original format. CDMA has up to 20 times the capacity of analog cellular service and is best known for its superior call quality and long battery life.

Computer-Aided Design (CAD)

Sophisticated, computerized workstations and software used to design integrated circuit chips.

Defect

A chemical or structural irregularity that degrades the product. Defects can affect the product over time or interfere with manufacturing the chip correctly. Common causes of defects are flakes from skin or cosmetics and droplets from a person's sneeze.

Die

A single integrated circuit (or chip) cut from the wafer on which it was manufactured.

Digital

The method of representing information as numbers with discrete (non-continuous) values, usually expressed as a sequence of binary digits (ones and zeros).

Digital Cellular

State of the art in cellular communications technology, up to 15 times the capacity of analog technology with significantly less static, loss/interruption of the signal when passing between cells, and connection problems because of congested relays.

Digital Modem

A term given to a piece of equipment that joins a digital phone line to a phone, PC, or other hardware. It allows for testing, conditioning, circuit timing, and other analysis of a phone line and is not used for communications purposes.

Digital Signal Processing (DSP)

Digital circuits designed to address a broad class of problems in signal reception and analysis that have traditionally been solved using analog components. DSP is used to enhance, analyze, filter, modulate, or otherwise manipulate standard analog functions, such as images, sounds, radar pulses, and other such signals by analyzing and transforming wave-forms (e.g., transmitting data over phone lines via modem).

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)

A technology that increases the digital speed of ordinary phone lines by a substantial factor over common dial-up modems. Offers symmetrical and asymmetrical operation. Asymmetrical versions (ADSL, RADSL, VDSL, etc.) provide higher downstream transmission than upstream and are better suited for Internet usage and video on demand applications. Symmetric DLS (HDLS, SDSL, IDSL, etc.) provide the same speed in both directions. All DSLs have distance limitations of around two or three miles between the telephone company's central office and the customer site.

Diode

A signal and switching device that allows current in one direction and blocks it in the opposite direction. One use: regulating load voltages.

Discrete Device

A device that contains one active element, such as a transistor or diode, although a hybrid might contain more than one active element. In comparison, an integrated circuit could contain millions of active elements on a single chip.

Doping

A wafer fabrication process in which exposed areas of silicon are bombarded with chemical impurities to alter the way the silicon conducts electricity in those areas.

Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM)

A type of memory component. "Dynamic" means the device's memory cells must be recharged periodically. Information stored in the memory cells is accessed randomly. Memory is a key component of most electronic products.

Embedded Processor

A computer chip that controls the function of its product. While embedded processors sometimes refer to the type of chips used in simple electronic toys, "talking" greeting cards, and similar consumer products, they are also high-functioning microcontrollers that are the brains of products such as laser printers.

Etch

The removal of selected portions of materials to define patterned layers on chips.

Ethernet

A local area network used for connecting computer, printers, workstations, terminals, servers, and other computer hardware within the same company. Ethernet operates over twisted wire and over coaxial cable at speeds up to 10 million bits per second (Mbps).

Extreme Ultraviolet Technology (EUV)

A technology for extending ultraviolet lithography by manufacturing a lens with concave and convex mirrors. This type of manufacturing allows the lens to focus patterns on a chip that are too small to be lithographed.

Fab

The fabrication facility, or fab, is the manufacturing plant where the front-end process of making semiconductors on silicon wafers is completed. The package and assembly (back-end) stages are typically completed at other facilities.

Fabless

A semiconductor company with no wafer fabrication capability.

Foundry

A wafer production and processing plant. Usually used to denote a facility that is available on a contract basis to companies that do not have wafer fab capability of their own, or that wish to supplement their own capabilities.

Integrated Circuit (IC)

Semiconductor chip in which many active or passive elements are fabricated and connected together on a continuous substrate, as opposed to discrete devices, such as transistors, resistors, capacitors, and diodes that exist individually.

Ion Implantation

One way that the surface of a chip is transformed. It is a method that fires beams of charged atoms at the surface of the wafer. The high level of energy of these ions allows them to penetrate the silicon to produce the desired doping effect.

Lithography

The transfer of a pattern or image from one medium to another, as from a mask to a wafer. If light is used to effect the transfer, the term "photolithography" applies. "Microlithography" refers to the process as applied to images with features in the micrometer range.

Local Area Network (LAN)

A communications network that serves users within a confined geographical area and is made up of servers, workstations, a network operating system, and a communications link.

Microcontroller

A microcontroller is a stand-alone device that performs computer functions within an electronic system without the need of other support circuits. A microcontroller contains memory functions, unlike a microprocessor, which is typically paired with a chip that provides memory. Microcontrollers are used in TVs, VCRs, microwave ovens, and automobile engines.

Micron

A metric unit of linear measure that equals one millionth of a meter or one thousandth of a millimeter. A thousand times bigger than a nanometer. The diameter of a human hair is about 100 microns. Today's semiconductors have lines etched at .18 microns.

Microprocessor

A central processing unit (CPU) fabricated on one or more chips, containing the basic arithmetic, logic, and control elements required by a computer for processing data. Microprocessor also refers to an integrated circuit that accepts coded instructions, executes the instructions, and delivers signals that describe its internal status.

Mixed Signals

A class of ICs that have traditionally been considered analog semiconductors. They can also be defined as anything that combines analog and digital circuitry—and that includes many ASICs and DSPs.

Modem

A type of computer equipment that links computers via telephone lines and enables the transmission of data. Derived from the words "modulate" and "demodulate," because a modem converts, or modulates, transmission signals from digital to analog for transmission over analog telecommunications lines, and then converts them back, or demodulates the signals, from analog back to digital.

Nanometer

A metric unit of linear measure that equals one billionth of a meter.

Nanotechnology

The ability to see, measure, and make objects that are within the same tiny size scale as atoms and molecules. The nanotechnology realm can be defined as being between 0.1 nanometer (about the size of a hydrogen atom) and 100 nanometers (about the size of a virus).

Network

An arrangement of objects that are interconnected. In communications, the transmission channels interconnecting all clients and server stations as well as all supporting hardware and software.

Non-Volatile Memory

A storage device whose contents are preserved when its power is off. Storage using magnetic disks or tape is normally non-volatile. Some semiconductor memories (ROM, EPROM, Flash memory) are non-volatile while other semiconductor memories (static RAM and especially dynamic RAM) are normally volatile but can be made into non-volatile storage by permanently connecting a (rechargeable) battery.

Optoelectronics

A device that is responsive to or that emits or modifies light waves. Examples are LEDs, optical couplers, laser diodes, and photo detectors.

Packaging

The protective container or housing for an electronic component or die, with external terminals to provide electrical access to the components inside. Packages provide for power and signal distribution, power dissipation, and physical and chemical protection of the circuits.

Printed Circuit Board (PCB)

Flat material on which electronic components are mounted. Also provides electrical pathways that connect components.

Radio Frequency (RF)

The rage of electromagnetic frequencies above the audio range and below the visible light. All broadcast transmission, from AM radio to satellites, falls into this range, between 30KHz and 300GHz.

Random Access Memory (RAM)

May be written to, or read from, any address location in any sequence. Also called a read/write memory, RAM stores digital bits temporarily and can be changed rapidly as required. RAM constitutes the basic read/write storage element in computers.

Semiconductor

This is the generic name for discrete devices and integrated circuits that can control the flow of electrical signals. Silicon is the basic material on which semiconductors are fabricated.

Solid State

Refers to the electronic properties of crystalline material, as opposed to vacuum and gas-filled tubes that transmit electricity. Compared with earlier vacuum-tube devices, solid-state components are smaller, less expensive, more reliable, use less power, and generate less heat.

Substrate

The body or base layer of an integrated circuit, onto which other layers are deposited to form the circuit. The substrate is usually silicon, although sapphire is used for certain applications, particularly military, where radiation resistance is important. The substrate is originally part of the wafer from which the die is cut. It is used as the electrical ground for the circuit.

System on a Chip

A chip that is a self-contained system, including processing, memory, and input-output functions.

Transistor

An electronic device capable of amplifying electronic signals similar to the vacuum tube but made from a semiconductor material such as silicon or germanium.

Wafer

A thin slice, typically 10 to 30 mils thick, sawed from a cylindrical ingot (boule) of extremely pure, crystalline silicon, typically six to eight inches in diameter. Arrays of ICs or discrete devices are fabricated in the wafers during the manufacturing process.

Yield

Yield refers to the percentage or absolute number of defect-free die on a silicon wafer or of packaged units that pass all device specifications. Because it costs the same to process a wafer with 10 percent good die as 90 percent good die, eliminating defects and improving yield become the critical variable in determining the cost per chip.