how do transistors work on cpus and gpus?

[adarw]

i think ive finally understood transistors, but how do they work on cpus and gpus? how are there millions of them on a small piece of silicon?

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, adarw said:

i think ive finally understood transistors, but how do they work on cpus and gpus? how are there millions of them on a small piece of silicon?

these measurements are not accurate so take them with a grain of salt

 

intel's newest design is 10nm transistors, to give an idea follow these steps

 

look at your pinky, it's ~1cm across

you might also know from heart how big 1mm is, if you don't you can ask your parents to show you

 

from there, take that and shrink it by 1000x, now you have 1 micrometer, 1/1000000 of a meter, still to big, so take that and shrink THAT by 100x, now you have 10nm, 1/100,000,000th of a meter, you could also look at scale of the universe to get another idea, I also have some other examples if you want more of an idea

 

tldr: they are very, very, VERY small

[Guest]

just to get another example out, look at your hair, it's around .1 millimeters across, make a guess as to how many silicon atoms across it is

 

Spoiler

s

 

[adarw]

2 minutes ago, Finnegan1616 said:

these measurements are not accurate so take them with a grain of salt

 

intel's newest design is 10nm transistors, to give an idea follow these steps

 

look at your pinky, it's ~1cm across

you might also know from heart how big 1mm is, if you don't you can ask your parents to show you

 

from there, take that and shrink it by 1000x, now you have 1 micrometer, 1/1000000 of a meter, still to big, so take that and shrink THAT by 100x, now you have 10nm, 1/100,000,000th of a meter, you could also look at scale of the universe to get another idea, I also have some other examples if you want more of an idea

 

tldr: they are very, very, VERY small

ik they are small lol, im asking how do they work.... 

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, adarw said:

ik they are small lol, im asking how do they work.... 

as far as I understand

 

 

when they're on, they let electrons through, when they're off, they don't

 

 

and from there, on=1, off=2

and once you have binary code, you can start to say more complex things, here's a video and a couple screenshots

 

 

 

hopefully that helps

 

 

[HanZie82]

Quote

Rather than individual transistors, in computer terms we rather talk about gates. So normally we see and use gates as symbols

, assuming they will do what they are claimed to do, whatever is “inside” them.

Gates are interconnected, and a CPU clock will pulse through changes, so that between clock events there’s a stable state. Many gates are used for boolean operations, but it’s also possible to connect gates so they serve as memory, frequency dividers, data converters etc.

E.g. an Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU) contains a lot of gates to perform mathematical and boolean operators like addition, multiplication, logical or bitwise and/or/xor, bit shifting etc.

One of the best ways I’ve found to see the whole architecture of a CPU is to look at the design of a microcontroller, as they tend to have a much simpler CPU than you’d see in a PC. Microcontrollers also tend to be fully static and usually have simple instruction pipelines and often no RAM cache etc, that also makes them a bit easier to grasp. The fundamental principles are still the same.

-Anders Borg, Owner, consultant, product developer at Abiro AB (2016-present)

^{Source: https://www.quora.com/How-do-transistors-work-together-inside-a-CPU-to-produce-output-data-from-instructions}

 

Sorry for the (reasonably simple) copy and paste. But this explained it better then i ever could.

 

4 minutes ago, Finnegan1616 said:

as far as I understand

 

 

when they're on, they let electrons through, when they're off, they don't

 

 

and from there, on=1, off=2

and once you have binary code, you can start to say more complex things

 

 

 

hopefully that helps

 

 

I dont want to be rude but, maybe it helps to actually read the question next time.
OP says he knows how transistors work already, and is JUST interested in how they work together in CPU's and GPU's.

Or i have hugely mistaken the question. - Yup i have.
Well i have not understood the answer when i first wrote this down, my apologies i was incorrect.
You do have answered the question.

[ZeblodS]

7 minutes ago, adarw said:

ik they are small lol, im asking how do they work.... 

They work pretty much like "regular" transistors.

 

They are made by chemical deposition of extremely thin layers of conductive material on a substrate, that are masked and photo graved to form the transistor structure. Then the different parts are doped with chemical deposition to form anodes and cathodes. You repeat the process over several layers, add layers with interconnects, etc.

 

I'm still amazed how cheap all these chip cost given how hard and precise their manufacturing process is...

[Guest]

1 minute ago, ZeblodS said:

They work pretty much like "regular" transistors.

 

They are made by chemical deposition of extremely thin layers of conductive material on a substrate, that are masked and photo graved to form the transistor structure. Then the different parts are doped with chemical deposition to form anodes and cathodes. You repeat the process over several layers, add layers with interconnects, etc.

 

I'm still amazed how cheap all these chip cost given how hard and precise their manufacturing process is...

I'm sure it would cost me over a dollar to make a transistor, meaning for me, it would cost more than $250,000,000 to make an 11900k

[Freakwise]

Well transistor alone couldn't do much honestly, however a group of transistors in certain config can create a logic gate, and that's (afaik) the base of every compute processor

 

How do they work? Well, Here's some handy video if you want to go deep into it

 

 

 

 

[adarw]

3 minutes ago, Freakwise said:

Well transistor alone couldn't do much honestly, however a group of transistors in certain config can create a logic gate, and that's (afaik) the base of every compute processor

 

How do they work? Well, Here's some handy video if you want to go deep into it

 

 

 

 

well this is going to be a long day..... lol thanks!

[Moonzy]

Once you know how transistor works, and how logic gate functions, you can look up how transistors form logic gates, then there's your answer

 

As for how they fit millions, just shrink it

 

YouTube should have better and clearer explanation anyways

[igormp]

I can recommend this game if you prefer a more intuitive way to learn: https://nandgame.com/