DISCLAIMER - the content of this blog should be on the right lines but is not authoritative and not to be relied on. Best to do your own research after reading this if you are interested - ha!
I am writing this short blog to share something that I read recently which I find really incredible. I have been reading a book called Material World by Ed Conway.
Here is an extract - but before I repeat it I just want to set the scene :
I was born pre computer - certainly pre mobile phones and reference to micro chips in common parlance. I know next to nothing about computer engineering - but of course I had heard of Silicon Valley, silicon chips, micro chips etc etc and that the things that make our computers and phones ever more powerful are getting small and smaller. But having said that the reference to "chip" conjured up in my uninformed mind a slither of plastic a bit like a tiddlywinks counter or like a small Bakelite circuit board - that's how ignorant I was !
This is what I now understand from what Conway describes in a few short paragraphs :
In my day they were transistors. Now they are referred to as chips - micro chips - semi conductors. Effectively they are on off switches (or sequences of on off switches) because computers are driven by using a binary system - 0 and 1 .
A modern mobile phone processor can fit 12 billion transistors into an area slightly smaller than a square centimeter ( a chip).
The latest such chips can fit roughly 15 billion transistors into a dot the size of a full stop that follows the end of this sentence. Yes this . dot ! Todays smallest transistors are smaller than a red blood cell. They are now referred to as nanochips but we are now moving into the angstrom era which are much much smaller than nano (which is much much smaller than micro.) These semi conductors are so small they are invisible - even the most powerful conventional microscopes cannot see them. Because they are so small more and more can be crammed onto a silicon chip making our computers - in fact just about everything we use in modern daily life - faster, more efficient (intelligent) while lighter and more compact.
This is where my insight stops. I have no idea how these miniscule things are handled, assembled, connected to make something coherent.
This information changes nothing but does leave me with a sense of incredulity and awe.
One thing I forgot. The silicon (metal) used to make chips is extracted from melting quartz rock under extreme temperatures. Silicon's unique feature is it is a semi conductor of electricity - ie half allows electricity to pass through it (a conductor like copper) and half does not allow electricity to pass through it (an insulator - like glass) - which makes it the perfect material to form an on off binary switch.
UPDATE
On further consideration I have modified my inderstanding.
In an old style Trannie - transistor radio - the radio would have maybe 6 transistors. Each transistor was a soldered little circuit that controlled one function - such as volume or tuning. Transistors were much smaller than the valve sets they replaced and much less power demanding so they could become portable.
A micro chip has replaced the transistor. Each micro chip can have multi functions because they can contain so many on off switches. Smart machines containing these chips can be incredibly smaller, lighter, more powerful and more efficient on power - hence the modern mobile phone and what it can do. The latest development - angstrom size - is like chips moving from valves to transistors to micro chips in one leap. Incredible power, capacity and efficiency in something so small it cannot be seen by the human eye. I think that is right. Their future applications will be incredible.
