Telecommunications and the semiconductor industry have grown alongside each other. The original long-distance operating companies were among the first to produce semiconductor chips in the modern sense. These chips usually consisted of crystals grown from a lattice, which would ultimately replace vacuum tubes in most switching and amplification chores.
Phone companies would install transistors and related semiconductors in the automated switching tandems in their wire centers. Three wires were attached to each of these components, one carrying incoming electrical voltage and another carrying voice signals from a customer’s handset. By mixing the two currents, transistors could greatly boost the amount of sound present in a conventional circuit. Since semiconductors don’t generate their power source, they normally modulate incoming electrons streamed out of an attached power supply.
The need for smaller semiconductor chips spurred innovation as conventional telephone service gave way to wireless connectivity. First-generation cellular handsets were relatively large compared to today’s models, giving engineers plenty of header space. Integrated circuits, which consist of multiple transistors and diodes packaged into a single unit, helped to make these devices smaller over time.
These same chips provide the logic circuitry for almost all modern digital electronics, which helps to explain why smartphone technology resembles other types of computer equipment. Printed integrated circuit design allows manufacturers to create chips that contain radio transmitters and receivers, thus making it possible to make a single device that powers every aspect of a cellular phone. System-on-a-chip equipment has become popular with operators of 5G networks as well as those who manage sensors and other pieces of automated gear that have to send out data over a publicly switched network.
Telephone company central office buildings have also incorporated semiconductor technology in ways that earlier innovators could never have imagined. Mechanical switching systems, such as the venerable crossbar devices that once stood in nearly every telecom shed, were initially replaced with transistorized minicomputer cores that could process far more calls than these older devices ever could. More recently, commodity-grade personal computer hardware has largely phased out even these designs as long-distance providers struggle to keep up with the competing demands of mobile data users.
Regardless of what kind of hardware they deploy, phone companies largely use semiconductors grown from crystalline materials before being doped with trace amounts of other substances. These materials combine to create miniature regions that allow electrical current to pass in one direction but not the other, which enables them to act as microscopic switches. Every switch gate can handle at most a single bit of information at any given time, so most chips carry millions of such gates to perform mathematical calculations in a reasonable time frame.
Engineering teams are quickly approaching a threshold beyond which they cannot make semiconductor chips any smaller without sacrificing the processing power they provide. As customers demand more bandwidth, technicians will likely search for new ways to overcome these limitations.
Published By: Aize Perez
