An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of miniaturized transistors and other electronic components are integrated together on the chip. This results in circuits that are orders of magnitude smaller, faster, and less expensive than those constructed of discrete components, allowing a large transistor count.
Arm (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England whose primary business is the design of ARM processors (CPUs). It also designs other chips, provides software development tools under the DS-5, RealView and Keil brands, and provides systems and platforms, system-on-a-chip (SoC) infrastructure and software. As a "holding" company, it also holds shares of other companies.
An adder, or summer, is a digital circuit that performs addition of numbers. In many computers and other kinds of processors adders are used in the arithmetic logic units (ALUs). They are also used in other parts of the processor, where they are used to calculate addresses, table indices, increment and decrement operators and similar operations. Although adders can be constructed for many number representations, such as binary-coded decimal or excess-3, the most common adders operate on binary numbers.
A binary multiplier is an electronic circuit used in digital electronics, such as a computer, to multiply two binary numbers. A variety of techniques can be used to implement a digital multiplier. Most techniques involve computing the set of partial products, which are then summed together using binary adders. This process is similar to long multiplication, except that it uses a base-2 (binary) numeral system. Between 1947 and 1949 Arthur Alec Robinson worked for English Electric Ltd, as a student apprentice, and then as a development engineer.
Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools work together in a design flow that chip designers use to design and analyze entire semiconductor chips. Since a modern semiconductor chip can have billions of components, EDA tools are essential for their design; this article in particular describes EDA specifically with respect to integrated circuits (ICs).
