# [TECH] Integrated Circuit
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**The Integrated Circuit (IC)** — a single semiconductor chip containing multiple transistors, resistors, and capacitors — was independently invented by Jack Kilby (TI, 1958) and Robert Noyce (Fairchild, 1959) and became the engine of the digital revolution.
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## Overview
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Before ICs, electronic systems were built from discrete components hand-soldered together. The IC allowed miniaturisation, cost reduction, and reliability improvements of orders of magnitude. Gordon Moore observed (1965) that transistor density doubles approximately every two years ("Moore's Law"), a trend that held for 50 years. The Intel 4004 (1971, 2,300 transistors) was the first commercial microprocessor; NVIDIA's H100 (2022) contains 80 billion transistors. The foundry model (TSMC, 1987) industrialised IC manufacturing to the most complex manufacturing process ever devised.
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## Key Actors
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- **Companies**: Texas Instruments (1951), Fairchild Semiconductor (1957), Intel (1968), TSMC (1987), Samsung (1969), NVIDIA (1993)
- **Inventors**: Jack Kilby (1923–2005, **Nobel Prize 2000**), Robert Noyce (1927–1990, no Nobel)
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## Key Patents
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- Kilby, J. US Patent 3,138,743 (1964) — integrated circuit
- Noyce, R. US Patent 2,981,877 (1961) — semiconductor device-and-lead structure
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## Economic Value
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Global semiconductor market: **$600 billion/year** (WSTS 2023). Electronics, computing, and communications enabled by ICs: $10–15T/year. The IC is arguably the single most economically important invention of the 20th century.
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## Notes
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WSTS *Semiconductor Market Forecast* 2023. McKinsey estimates cumulative IC-enabled economic value at >$100T since 1960.
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# Parents
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* [TECH] Transistor⏎