Circuits manufactured on the surface of semiconductor chips are also called thin-film integrated circuits. Another thick-film hybrid integrated circuit is a miniaturized circuit composed of independent semiconductor equipment and passive components integrated into the substrate or circuit board.

From 1949 to 1957, Werner Jacobi, Jeffrey Dummer, Sidney Darlington and Yasuo Tarui developed prototypes, But the modern integrated circuit was invented by Jack Kilby in 1958. Robert Noyce, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his work, but who also developed the modern, practical integrated circuit, died earlier in 1990.