How do they make transistors so small that you can fit billions within a graphics card or computer components?

Question

How do they make transistors so small that you can fit billions within a graphics card or computer components?

In: 3

Answer 1

[Optical lithography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photolithography).

Basically you can think of it as a kind of (very high quality) microscope objective used in reverse to image a strongly reduced map of the circuit on the silicon wafer.

The light (often ultraviolet) hardens a resin, similar to what dentists do, which will protect some parts of the silicon from the current processing step. Then the resin gets washed away, a new coat layered on, a new, complementary image used for the next step, and so on. It’s a very complex process.