or chip
semiconductor material embedded with integrated circuitry.
Chips comprise the processing and memory units of the modern digital computer (see microprocessor ; RAM ). Chip making is extremely precise and is usually done in a "clean room," since even microscopic contamination could render the chip defective. As transistor components have shrunk, the number per chip has doubled about every 18 months (a phenomenon known as Moore's law), from a few thousand in 1971 ( Intel Corp. 's first chip) to millions by 1989. {{link=nanotechnology">Nanotechnology is expected to make transistors even smaller and chips correspondingly more powerful in the 21st century.