- published: 02 Jan 2016
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An analog chip is a set of miniature electronic analog circuits formed on a single piece of semiconductor material.
The voltage and current at specified points in the circuits of an analog chips vary continuously in time. In contrast, digital chips only use and create voltages or currents at discrete levels, with no intermediate values. In addition to Transistors, analog chips often have a larger number of passive elements (Inductor/Capacitors/Resistors) than digital chips typically do. Inductors tend to be avoided because of their large size. It was one of those fortunate discoveries that a transistor and capacitor together can do the work of an inductor. When this trick is used in a CFL, you get an electronic ballast.
Analog chips may also contain digital logic elements to replace some analog functions, or to allow the chip to communicate with a microprocessor. For this reason and since logic is commonly implemented using CMOS technology, these chips use BiCMOS processes by companies such as Freescale, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics and others. This is known as mixed signal processing and allows a designer to incorporate more functions in the chip. Some of the benefits include load protection, reduced pats count and higher reliability.