The computer industry is built on sand. For sand contains silicon, and silicon is an excellent material for building transistors, the tiny electrical switches used in a microprocessor chip. It is the ability to constantly shrink those transistors that has driven the industry. The components in Intel's 4004, the first microprocessor, were 10,000 nanometres wide, about a tenth as wide as a human hair. The features in the company's latest products, after decades of shrinkage, are just 22 nanometres across-about as wide as 50 of the silicon atoms from which they are made. The obsession with size arises from the almost magical results of shrinking a transistor. More transistors mean more capable hardware. Smaller transistors switch on and off more quickly, so can carry out calculations faster. And they use less electricity. The result has been an explosion in computer power that has been one of the denning features of the past 50 years.
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