Term of the Moment
automotive safety systems
Definition: active area
The active area, which is from five to 100 nanometers (nm) thick, is the layer of transistors in a chip where all the transistor switching and action takes place. To get an idea of just how minuscule that layer is, compare the active area to a postage stamp, which is from 70,000 to 100,000 nm thick. In the future, 3D stacking of transistors will change that ratio because there will more action layers in a chip (see CFET). See chip, half-adder and Boolean logic.
Entirely Magical
No man-made object is more incredible than the chip. Today's state-of-the-art CPUs and SoCs contain billions of transistors, many millions of which are simultaneously switching their state from on to off and off to on every second. In fact, so many transistors are changing at the same time that there can be quadrillions and quintillions of transistor state changes taking place every second. Think about that number... quadrillions and quintillions of changes every second for hours on end in digital perfection. See head of a pin, transistor and SoC.
A Digital Miracle
There Are Many Layers on a Chip
Entirely Magical
No man-made object is more incredible than the chip. Today's state-of-the-art CPUs and SoCs contain billions of transistors, many millions of which are simultaneously switching their state from on to off and off to on every second. In fact, so many transistors are changing at the same time that there can be quadrillions and quintillions of transistor state changes taking place every second. Think about that number... quadrillions and quintillions of changes every second for hours on end in digital perfection. See head of a pin, transistor and SoC.
When people look at a chip package, they see an object that can be the size of a cracker, but the active area is where the action takes place. Chip packages can be as large as this example or as small as the tip of a lead pencil (see microcontroller). See Boolean logic and chip package.
Transistors interconnect to each other through as many as 20 "metal" layers above the active layer. Each metal layer in state-of-the-art chips is from 4,000 to 7,000 nanometers (nm). Compare that to a human hair, which can be up to 100,000 nm in diameter. See process technology.