a set of microminiaturized, electronic circuits that are designed for use as processors and memory in computers and countless consumer and industrial products. Chips are the driving force in this industry. Small chips can hold from a handful to tens of thousands of transistors. They look like tiny chips of aluminum, no more than 1/16" square by 1/30" thick, which is where the term "chip" came from. Large chips, which can be more than a half inch square, hold millions of transistors. It is actually only the top one thousandth of an inch of a chip's surface that holds the circuits. The rest of it is just a base. The terms chip, integrated circuit and microchip are synonymous.