Electronic circuit

In an integrated circuit or IC, the components and interconnections are formed on the same substrate, typically a semiconductor such as doped silicon or (less commonly) gallium arsenide.

Analog circuits are very commonly represented in schematic diagrams, in which wires are shown as lines, and each component has a unique symbol.

Wires are usually treated as ideal zero-voltage interconnections; any resistance or reactance is captured by explicitly adding a parasitic element, such as a discrete resistor or inductor.

As a consequence, extremely complex digital circuits, with billions of logic elements integrated on a single silicon chip, can be fabricated at low cost.

Such digital integrated circuits are ubiquitous in modern electronic devices, such as calculators, mobile phone handsets, and computers.

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), chips with logic circuitry whose configuration can be modified after fabrication, are also widely used in prototyping and development.

In electronics, prototyping means building an actual circuit to a theoretical design to verify that it works, and to provide a physical platform for debugging it if it does not.

[6] The developer can choose to deploy their invention as-is using the prototyping platform, or replace it with only the microcontroller chip and the circuitry that is relevant to their product.