What is an ic how it helps in reducing the size of computers?

Answer 1

IC stands for integrated circuits. They help to reduce the size of the computer because it is simply a small chip that is embedded with all the information needed. Because the chip is so small, the sizes of computers can be reduced.

Answer 2

A single IC chip - can hold literally thousands of microscopic transistors and circuits. If you created the circuitry of a single chip with 'standard' components - it would fill the CPU box of a computer !

Answer 3

An IC... is an integrated circuit. They're the small, square, black objects in the computer's circuit board - with the silver 'legs'. They basically took the place of the old 'resistors' 'capacitors' and 'transistors' that were used in older equipment. An IC 'chip' can hold literally thousands of microscopic components. If the components were scaled up to the size of those available in the very early days of computers - you would need a HUGE room just for the computer's main circuitry.

Answer 4

IC is short for Integrated Circuit. An integrated circuit is a chip which contains multiple components or circuits in the same package. Before the IC was the transistor. An IC can contain many transistors and other components. From the basic IC, they went to LSI (large scale integration) and then to VLSI (very large scale integration). So they can put thousands, if not millions of components into a single package, with the majority of the connections already made.

Looking at it another way, consider the transistors they had then. They were about maybe 6mm x 12mm in size with 3 wires. They had to be mounted on circuit boards with traces on them. So multiple interconnected circuits on the same die would cut out a lot of packaging and traces.

Then consider the types of circuits that could be done that couldn't be done with discrete transistors. With more custom components, you can get by with less components, thus making things smaller.