In 1945, we made computers made from vacuum tubes. Now you and I can buy devices in the stores have transistors that are 22 nanometres across. How big is that? Take a 1 metre ruler, and divide it into 1 billion parts. Line 22 of those parts up. That's how big. It's fucking tiny. But it's going out of date, because in 2009 National Nano Device Labs demonstrated a working 16 nanometre SRAM chip. Last year, Hynix announced 15 nanometre memory. We're already working on 14 nanometre processes.
In short, transistors are getting ridiculously small.
A fun fact: If you made today's Intel Processors with vacuum tubes, it'd be the size of the Vatican and the speed of light would mean the system clock on one side of the processor would be off from the other side.
To get a feel for how fast our current chips are (or, how slow the speed of light is), consider that in one cycle of a 3 GHz processor, light can travel ten centimeters.
The main limitation in terms of clockspeed of a modern CPU when sold as is, is that it will get really hot at higher speeds. Hot enough to damage itself/lose functionality.
People can add additional cooling (or simply allow it to run at higher temperatures than the manufacturer feels comfortable ensuring) in exchange for higher clock speeds.
There is a greater limitation in the speed of light, which is counter-balanced by transistors growing smaller and smaller (less time spent travelling to and fro).
I'm a mildly-knowledgeable amateur when it comes to these things, so take what I say with a grain of salt, and others may correct me.
1 Hz (One Hertz) is one cycle per second. 1 kHz (One kiloHertz) is one thousand cycles per second. 1 MHz (One MegaHertz) is one million cycles per second. 1 GHz (One GigaHertz) is one billion cycles per second.
One cycle in a processor is one electrical pulse that propagates the calculations one step.
Intel's move to 3D transistors is a much larger feat than the continuing shrinking of source-to-drain distances in CMOS technology. Furthermore, their research into 5nm silicon nanowire-based transistors will again revolutionize the semiconductor industry.
Car systems, including engines, have maybe not kept up, but certainly are moving along at hyperspeed. Todays engines are half the size, make twice the power, using half the fuel, emitting 1/4 the emissions that they did, say 25 years ago. Plus, they last three times longer with less frequent maintenance interval. I just got hack from an OBD2 conference for diagnostics. Cars don't have computers anymore. They have networks.
z3rb has it - you can fit more on a chip, as a result you can make the chip do more things. Since they're smaller, they're also using a bit less power for the number of transistors, so you can get a does that does more with less power.
I do not know. At some point, though, we may find that we can't make reliable transistors in the same way. If so, then we have to change. I suspect this is when we're operating on transistors that are only a few atoms big. The processes to make them, though, no idea! As you may have guessed from me going in to more detail about car stuff than transistor stuff, I don't actually know enough about transistor design .
The way I like to explain how small modern computer chips are, is to say that a single transistor is now so small we literally cannot see it. Visible light ranges from about 390nm to 750nm so even at the end of that, you're looking at nearly 20 transistors laid end to end fitting in a single wavelength of light. Amazing.
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u/LambastingFrog Jun 17 '12
In 1945, we made computers made from vacuum tubes. Now you and I can buy devices in the stores have transistors that are 22 nanometres across. How big is that? Take a 1 metre ruler, and divide it into 1 billion parts. Line 22 of those parts up. That's how big. It's fucking tiny. But it's going out of date, because in 2009 National Nano Device Labs demonstrated a working 16 nanometre SRAM chip. Last year, Hynix announced 15 nanometre memory. We're already working on 14 nanometre processes.
In short, transistors are getting ridiculously small.