Trillions of Transistors

A trillion is a very big number. That might sound as though I’m trying to be cute by understating things, but the truth is that there are far, far bigger numbers than a mere trillion.

Nevertheless, it is very, very big by our everyday standards of measurement. We don’t go a trillion miles or talk about a trillion minutes passing by, although we do sometimes talk about a trillion dollars nowadays.

A trillion is a thousand billion, and we might be able to grasp that in a comparative manner by remembering that there are about 8 billion humans, so a trillion is more than a hundred times bigger than that.

Now, turn your thoughts to a computer transistor. This humble invention might end up changing the world more than any other single idea we’ve ever had, but that remains to be seen. In spite of its world-changing nature, the transistor is incredibly tiny.

How tiny? Let me answer that the long way, by describing how transistors used to be.

The very first transistor was made by John Bardeen …