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

Keep in mind that they aren’t in one line. A square of them makes it much much easier to have so many. A square of 20 billion means a side length of approx 150,000 transistors. Taking a distance of 15nm (Apple uses 5nm, but adding extra for redundancy and variation), gives us a side length of 2mm.

This is really quite small still