Term of the Moment
Dogecoin
Definition: transistor density
The number of transistors per square millimeter on a chip. Today's state-of-the-art SoCs (system-on-chips) contain more than 100 million, which is smaller than the head of a pin. See transistor toggle, chip feature size, transistor and SoC.
132,000,000 Per Square Millimeter
More Than a Half Century Ago
One Hundred Million on the Head of a Pin
You Think 100 Million Is a Lot?
Apple's ARM-based M chips are state-of-the-art. The bare die of the M1 Max (middle) contains 57 billion transistors within a die size slightly less than one square inch. See Apple M series. (Image courtesy of Apple Inc.)
In 1971, with 2,300 transistors and a chip an eighth of an inch square, Intel's microprocessor had just under 200 transistors per square millimeter (see Intel 4004). (Image courtesy of Intel Corporation.)
Nearly impossible to fathom, but today's chips can contain 100 million and more transistors per square millimeter, which is about the area of the head of this pin. How about a half billion transistors some day (see CFET).
Holding three or four bits per cell, microSD storage cards such as this contain approximately five trillion transistors. Vertically stacked, there are roughly seven billion transistors per square millimeter! (Image courtesy of Sandisk Corporation.)