Edit : My first post to blow up. Crazy.
In: Technology
Not posting this comment to diminish what /u/RhynoD or others have already said, what they said is absolutely true. CPU manufacturers want them to be small, but not too small.
However, not all CPUs are the same size, and many higher-end CPUs are physically larger. In fact, the actual chip in consumer CPUs vary in size, even though the total size of the CPU does not. What you see the CPU is a bit of the printed circuit board (the little green board that contains all the connections between the chip and the rest of the computer) and the heat spreader on top. As the name implies, the heat spreader takes the heat generated by the CPU chip and spreads it out to improve cooling.
Under the heatspreader is the CPU chip itself. Even though the board and the heatspreader size doesn’t change, the chip underneath can vary. For example, [here is a size comparison between three different Intel CPUs](https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13400/9900K%20Mockup.jpg). The board and heatspreader remain the same size between all three CPUs. AMD and Intel have both decided on similar (although not the same) size CPU board/heatsink size just so both their low end and their high end CPUs of a generation can all work on the same motherboards and other products like heatsinks.
Their professional level CPUs, such as some of Intel Xeon or AMD’s Threadripper/EPYC CPUS have physically larger heat spreader/boards in addition to having massive chips. Part of the reason certain Xeon chips cost over ten thousand dollars is that large single-chip CPUs have high failure rates per /u/dale_glass comment, so they need to charge the price for a black market kidney to make their money back. AMD’s high end CPUs these days are actually a bunch of smaller CPU “chiplets” acting as a single CPU, which allows them pack a ton of CPU horsepower in a package you will only need to sell half of your kidney for.
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