semiconductor summary

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semiconductor, Class of crystalline solids with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Such materials can be treated chemically to allow transmission and control of an electric current. Semiconductors are used in the manufacture of electronic devices such as diodes, transistors, and integrated circuits. Intrinsic semiconductors have a high degree of chemical purity, but their conductivity is poor. Extrinsic semiconductors contain impurities that produce much greater conductivity. Some common intrinsic semiconductors are single crystals of silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide; such materials can be converted into the technologically more important extrinsic semiconductors by addition of small amounts of impurities, a process called doping (see dopant). Advances in semiconductor technology in recent years have gone hand in hand with increased operational speed in computers.


NEC Corp. summary

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see NEC Corporation.

NEC Corp., Major Japanese computer, electronics, and telecommunications equipment manufacturer. Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. (officially NEC Corp. in 1983), was founded in 1899 with funding from the Western Electric Co. Inc. of the U.S. NEC was the first Japanese joint venture with a foreign company. As Japan’s preeminent telecommunications company, NEC contributed to developments in mobile telephony, fibre-optic networks, private-branch exchanges (PBXs), and microwave, digital, and satellite communications systems. Besides mainframe computers, NEC was an early manufacturer of personal computers (PCs). In 1997 NEC merged its North American PC operations with Zenith Data Systems and Packard Bell to form Packard Bell-NEC, Inc.