"IC" generally refers to IC chip, i.e. microelectronic device.
It is a large number of microelectronic components (transistors, resistors, capacitors, etc.) to form an integrated circuit on a plastic base to make a chip.
IC chip contains wafer chip and package chip, the corresponding IC chip production line consists of two parts: wafer production line and package production line.
Based on the number of microelectronic devices integrated on a chip, integrated circuits can be divided into the following categories:
(1) Small Scale Integration (SSI): less than 10 logic gates or 100 transistors.
(2) Medium Scale Integration (MSI): 11 to 100 logic gates or 101 to 1k transistors.
(3) Large Scale Integration (LSI): 101~1k logic gates or 1,001~10k transistors.
(4) Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI): 1,001~10k logic gates or 10,001~100k transistors.
(5) very large scale integrated circuits (ULSI English full name Ultra Large Scale Integration): logic gate 10,001 ~ 1M or transistors 100,001 ~ 10M.
Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia-IC Chip