Integrated Circuit

Integrated circuit (IC), also called microelectronic circuit, microchip, or chip, an assembly of electronic components, fabricated as a single unit, in which miniaturized devices (e.g. capacitors and resistors) and their interconnections are built up on a thin substrate of semiconductor material (typically silicon).

They come in all sorts of flavors: single-circuit logic gates, op amps, 555 timers, voltage regulators, motor controllers, microcontrollers, microprocessors, FPGAs…the list just goes on-and-on.