CMOS is the abbreviation of Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor. It refers to a technology used in the manufacture of large-scale integrated circuit chips or a chip manufactured by this technology. It is a readable and writable RAM chip ON a computer motherboard. Because of the readable and writable feature, it is used to save the data after BIOS setting the computer hardware parameters ON the computer motherboard. This chip is only used to store the data.
A Voltage-controlled amplifying device is the basic unit of a CMOS digital integrated circuit.
The setting of various parameters in the BIOS must go through a special program. The BIOS setup program is generally integrated into the chip by the manufacturer, and the BIOS setup program can be entered through a specific key when the machine is turned on, so that the system can be set up conveniently. Therefore, BIOS settings are sometimes called CMOS settings.
In the computer field, CMOS often refers to a chip that stores basic computer startup information (such as date, time, startup settings, etc.). Sometimes people will confuse CMOS and BIOS. In fact, CMOS is a readable and writable parallel or serial FLASH chip on the motherboard. It is used to save BIOS hardware configuration and user settings for certain parameters.
Today, the CMOS manufacturing process is also used in the production of photosensitive elements for digital imaging equipment, especially SLR digital cameras with larger format specifications.
In addition, CMOS can also refer to complementary metal oxide semiconductor devices and manufacturing processes.
Therefore, even today, although it is called CMOS due to process reasons, CMOS has very different appearance characteristics in three application fields:
One is for computer information storage. CMOS is used as a rewritable chip. In this field, users usually don’t care about CMOS hardware issues, but only care about the information written on CMOS, that is, BIOS settings. The most common is to remove the battery on the motherboard when the system fails, and perform CMOS discharge operations to restore the BIOS settings.
Second, in the field of digital imaging, CMOS has been developed as a low-cost photosensitive element technology. Common digital products on the market mainly use CCD or CMOS photosensitive elements, especially low-end camera products, while high-end cameras are usually CCD photosensitive element.
The third is in the field of more professional integrated circuit design and manufacturing.