Inside a Processor
From the package to the silicon die, from the die to a single transistor
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Summary
When you hold it in your hand, the processor, the "brain" of the computer, is nothing more than a metal lid a few centimetres across and a green board. The real computing happens in the fingernail-sized piece of silicon inside. The surface of this die holds tens of billions of transistors: each one is a tiny switch that turns on when a voltage is put on its gate and off when it is not. A switch that is on means 1, a switch that is off means 0; everything a computer does comes from these switches working together.
In depth
A processor can be explored at three scales. The package protects the die, spreads its heat and carries its thousands of connections to the motherboard. The die is a piece of silicon divided into districts such as cores, cache, a graphics unit and a memory controller; dozens of layers of copper wiring are laid on top of it. At the very bottom of the die are transistors called MOSFETs: a voltage on the gate creates a thin conducting channel in the silicon underneath, and current flows from source to drain. The first single-chip microprocessor, in 1971, had 2,300 transistors; today's largest chips have more than 100 billion.
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