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

The transistors on a chip look nothing like the transistors you can see with your eyes. Using lasers and chemical processes they make tiny parts of the chip behave like transistors, then using even more complicated processes they’ll connect them with different layers of conductive/insulating material.

Modern cpus also have multiple layers of transistors, but then you run in to the problem of dissipating heat from those middle layers