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
Transistors are physical, however, they are not placed individually on a chip (one by one). That would indeed be almost impossible.
The entire chip is created through a lithography process, this is basically like creating old non-digital photographs.
The design of the chip, already having all these transistors, is projected on a light sensitive substrate. This causes chemical changes in the substrate which will eventually become the actual chip.(There are actually multiple layers created sequentially to get a 3D result.)
(In reality, it is much more complex, and you can’t use normal light, etc… but this is the principle.)
Latest Answers