Apple's M1 laptop chip, released in 2020, is smaller than a postage stamp. How many transistors does it contain?
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Answer
About 16 billion transistors
The smallest features on such a chip are only a few dozen atoms across, thousands of times thinner than a human hair.
How to estimate it
Divide the chip's area by the area of one transistor. The M1 die measures about 120 square millimetres, or 1.2 × 10^-4 square metres. On a 5 nanometre class process, each transistor with its wiring occupies a patch about 90 nm on a side: 8.1 × 10^-15 square metres. 1.2 × 10^-4 / 8.1 × 10^-15 = 15 billion. Apple states about 16 billion transistors.
Source: Apple
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