Chipsets or what we also know as CPUs are an important part of the operating process in smartphones or PCs. Just like the two devices above, chipsets continue to develop. A few years ago, chipsets had large transistor sizes. However, recently the size of chipset transistors has gotten smaller.
Currently, the smallest chipset transistor is known to be 5 nm, so what if its size reaches 1 nm? is there no further development? To find out the answer, see the following explanation.
Chipset manufacturing process.
We often see numbers written with nm units when reading chipset or CPU specifications on smartphones and PCs/Laptops. The number refers to the size of the fabrication or transistors in the chipset with nm units, what is that? nm stands for nanometer, this unit is a lower level than millimeters and micrometers.
You can imagine that millimeters are already very small, let alone nanometers. Therefore, if there is a CPU 8 nm writing, it means that the chipset contains 8 nanometer transistors. 1 millimeter is equal to 1,000 micrometers, while 1 micrometer is equal to 1,000 nanometers. So 1 millimeter is equal to 1 million nanometers. While the size of the CPU we assume is 8 nanometers, incredibly small right?
For a transistor size of 14 nanometers alone, it is equivalent to 1/1000 of a human hair. Maybe just to see it is very difficult and requires a microscope, as well as to make it. Until now, the semiconductor industry continues to grow and the size of the transistor in the chipset continues to shrink. The smaller the transistor, the more transistors are embedded in the chipset, the impact of which the performance of smartphones and PCs will increase.
The latest chipset fabrication in smartphones and PCs has reached a size of 5 nanometers. Even IBM claims that they have succeeded in making a chipset with a transistor fabrication measuring 2 nanometers. The question is, will the development of the chipset stop when it reaches a transistor size of 1 nanometer?
Chipsets will continue to develop
Although the chipset transistor reaches 1 nanometer, in fact the development of the chipset will continue to develop. Currently, chipsets in the world use silicon as the raw material. for the transistor working process in the chipset relies on silicon atoms. Silicon itself has an atomic size of 0.2 nanometers. So if the transistor size is 4 nanometers, there are about 20 silicon atoms in it.
Inside the silicon atom itself there are electrons that function to conduct electrical power. If the transistor size is smaller, the number of silicon atoms is less, as a result electricity cannot be conducted properly. Therefore, if you want to make a transistor with a size approaching 1 nanometer, raw materials other than silicon are needed which have a smaller atomic size in order to make a large number of atoms.
A number of parties say that the development of chipsets will stop for some time to come until they get more suitable raw materials than Silicon. One chipset manufacturer has conducted research to find a substitute raw material for Silicon. The results of the study refer to a raw material called Bismuth. However, bismuth has a lower abundance than Silicon in the world.
There is also another solution to deal with this problem, namely by using photonic technology or utilizing light as a substitute for electrons. This technology is known to have a higher speed and level of flexibility than electrons in current chipsets.
However, this technology is still in the development stage and it is hoped that in the future it can replace silicon.
