Ask A Scientist© Computer Science Archive

Index Key:   COM030
Author:      garb s class
Subject:     Microchips and uses.
How can we get microchips small enough to go into a telephone/watch?  What
are microchips?  Why are they important in telephone technology?

Response #:  1 of 1
Author:      asmith
Let us start with "what are microchips?"  These are electronic devices
printed onto the surface of small wafers of silicon.  Usually microchips
contain thousands or millions of transistors, resistors, and other circuit
elements, all created by special batch manufacturing processes where the
necessary elements are sort of sprayed onto the silicon through a mask.  Big
manufacturers of these include Intel, Motorola, Texas Instruments, and IBM.


These are the things that make computers run, but there are also special
purpose chips to do a lot of other things, among them could be something
that might do whatever a telephone has to do. One problem with a telephone
in a watch is you do not want to have to hook it up to the telephone wires
in order to use it - so how would you fix that problem?  It has to have some
kind of radio receiver and transmitter built in too, which is probably the
hard part.  You might want to try contacting people at Motorola to find out
what they are doing in this area!