I’ve always wondered how a program wtitten by a human makes a silicon chip work. The idea that a a chip made from an element responds to a written code to generate outputs is so intriguing to me. So, how does a program make a chip work? Sorry if i sound very naive.
In: Engineering
Plenty of chips don’t need any programing to work. They are purely hardware, they function because of their architecture, the way the transistors on them are arrayed and connected, and programs use them to process or convert information.
Something like a microprocessor will have onboard programing, either you connect it to a computer to change the program or you can affect it directly, normally by a low computer language like hexadecimal machine code. It works like a miniture computer: takes an input, calls the appropiate parts of it’s stored program to deal with it and generates an output all using circuitry.
The chips are called silicon chips because that’s the main semiconductor used but there are lots of different elements used for doping (making a P or N type semiconductor by adding elements that have extra electrons or holes in a matrix of silicon) or other purposes.
Latest Answers