the.com/microchip

means A tiny chip of semiconductor material etched with a complete electronic circuit, packing millions (or billions) of transistors into something smaller than a fingernail.

from 'Micro-' comes from Greek 'mikros,' meaning small, and 'chip' is just the ordinary English word for a small fragment — originally used for wood shavings or flakes knocked off a larger piece. When engineers in the mid-20th century began etching entire circuits onto a single flake of silicon, 'chip' stuck as the natural term, since the thing literally started life as a small sliver cut from a larger silicon wafer. Fittingly, the material itself — silicon — is refined from ordinary sand, which is the quiet joke sitting underneath the whole word.