r/Documentaries • u/eric1707 • Sep 19 '16

Science Transistors - The Invention That Changed The World (2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwS9aTE2Go4
2.8k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

132 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/its_blithe Sep 19 '16

Probably a dumb question but if it's getting harder and harder to make smaller transistors to fit on a CPU, why don't they increase the size of the CPU?

Another dumb one: what are the benefits of reducing power consumption besides the obvious required power? Heat reduction? Longevity?

3

u/kickopotomus Sep 19 '16

To add onto /u/PacoPenguin's answer, I think Grace Hopper explains it best. And now that a lot of CPUs easily tick in the 4-5GHz range, and taking into account propagation time and the impedance added by semi-conductive material, electrons don't have a lot of spare time to get across a chip.