how is it possible for computer chips to have billions of transistors?

Question

Aren’t transistors physical things? How is it possible to manufacture billions, especially within the small size of a computer chip?

I saw the Apple m2 chip has 20 billion transistors – it just seems incomprehensible that that many can be manufactured.. they could be microscopic, but 20 billion is still an absurd number

In: 2283

Answer 1

They are essentially printed. They’re not “assembled” mechanically. A silicon wafer has a large block of silicon circuits “projected” onto it and developed with special chemicals in extremely complicated and expensive photolithography machines. The wafer then contains a mass number of completed chips, some of which may be defective. They break the wafer up into individual chips to be sold and sell the defective chips as lower powered units by disabling defective areas of the chip.