Fall 2002
Small and smaller
There’s a limit to how small a piece of chocolate chip cookie you can have. At some point, you’ll either have a piece of chocolate or a piece of cookie, but not a piece of chocolate chip cookie.
You run into the same problem if you’re trying to make smaller silicon processor chips, says Kerry W. Hipps, professor of chemistry and materials science. Eventually the chip gets too small to function as a processor.
The processor is the brain in your computer. It makes the decisions about what data should go where, including how to route input like keyboard strokes, and how to route output … » More …