Speaker A
Isn't it crazy how we taught rocks to do math?
Marques Brownlee shrinks himself down by factors of 100 to visualize the scale of Apple's M5 chip, transistors, and semiconductor history, from room-sized computers to nanometer transistors.
Key Takeaways
- Modern chips pack billions of transistors into devices small enough to hold in your hand, at scales near 3 nanometers.
- Moore's law has driven transistors to shrink dramatically over roughly 75 years, from vacuum tubes to nanoscale features.
- Visualizing scale through relative comparisons makes nanotechnology understandable to general audiences.
What the video covers
- Brownlee frames Apple's yearly chip releases (M1 to M5) against the mind-boggling transistor counts packed into pocket-sized devices.
- He uses a 'scale-shrinking' approach, reducing his size by 100x at each step to make nanoscale dimensions tangible.
- At one step he is the size of a keyboard key, then about 2 micrometers tall, then 200 micrometers, comparing himself with bacteria, human hair, and paper thickness.
- The video references Moore's law, noting transistor counts roughly doubling every two years and transistors being halved in size roughly ten times over decades.
- Brownlee traces history from the ENIAC (1946) with vacuum tubes, to 1968 computers the size of rooms, through the 1980s and Windows XP era, to modern 3 nanometer transistors.
- Chip manufacturing is explained through photolithography, described as developing a photo with light projected onto atoms rather than film.
- Epic Spaceman, a creator who previously covered this scale, is credited for help with the visuals.
- The video notes it was made with Blender and without generative AI.
- The creator emphasizes that the progress has come from many people's hard work and that there is still a long way to go in semiconductors.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction: Rocks That Do Math
- 01:04Thinking About Scale Shrinking by 100x
- 02:41Shrinking to the Size of a Keyboard Key
- 04:31Entering Micrometer Scale and Chip Complexity
- 06:23Semiconductor History and Moore's Law
- 07:43Down to 200 Micrometers and Everyday Objects
- 09:09The Earliest Computers: ENIAC and 1968 Mainframes
- 10:50Photolithography and Closing Thoughts
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
And every year, there's some slide or some graphic with an impossibly big number of transistors on one chip on a device that you can hold in your hands.
Speaker A
Anyway, every year now, for a few years in a row, Apple unveils the latest version of their computer chips. M1, M2, M3, M4, and now the latest version, M5.
Speaker A
and wrap your head around the billions of stars in the galaxy and then the billions of galaxies in the universe?
Speaker A
And every year, there's some slide or some graphic with an impossibly big number of transistors on one chip, on a device that you can hold in your hands.
Speaker A
What if you could actually appreciate just how densely packed everything has to be and how small it has to get to fit on a device that just goes in your pocket? Well, that would require changing the scale in the opposite
Speaker A
Like, it's really hard to understand what that even means. Now, I'm a numbers person, so I really enjoy those scale-of-the-universe type videos. And like, how else is the average person supposed to appreciate how small we are
Speaker A
I snap my fingers, I'm going to shrink down by a hundred times, which is a massive amount. Two orders of magnitude.
Speaker A
and wrap your head around the billions of stars in the galaxy, and then the billions of galaxies in the universe?
Speaker A
day fit into the palm of our hands. But what about 100 times smaller? All right, here we are. Now I'm the size of a a single key on your keyboard. And of course, it wouldn't be a good scale
Speaker A
It's crazy. But what about billions of transistors in a single device that you can fit in your pocket and watch this video on?
Speaker A
how complex all these components already are. And RAM and storage have been ridiculously small for years now. And so we've got eight terabytes of it. Uh, and the M5 chip should be right over here powering the whole thing. Now, this is
Speaker A
What if you could actually appreciate just how densely packed everything has to be, and how small it has to get, to fit on a device that just goes in your pocket? Well, that would require changing the scale in the opposite
Speaker A
since a computer was the size of a room. And one more thing I want to at least highlight here. Technology only gets better because of the people working really hard on it. Like without this hard work, none of this improvement
Speaker A
direction. We would have to shrink way down. But with a little help, I'm up for that challenge. By the way, no generative AI is being used to create this video. [music] Just a whole lot of Blender. So, let's get to it. Every time
Speaker A
And that's stayed about true since the beginning of the semiconductor industry which means [music] we have a long way to go.
Speaker A
I snap my fingers, I'm going to shrink down by a hundred times, which is a massive amount. Two orders of magnitude.
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our own eyes. But yeah, a typical sheet of paper is about 100 micrometers thick.
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So, here I am, you know, the person, you know, I'm 6'3", so around 2 m tall, basically. So, you can picture me standing in the room in front of you, and the gadgets we use and know every
Speaker A
to me now is a transistor from 1968 20 years later. Moore's law says that that's enough time for the number of transistors per chip to double 10 times [music] which means they've cut the size of a transistor in half, 10 times. Now
Speaker A
day fit into the palm of our hands. But what about 100 times smaller? All right, here we are. Now I'm the size of a single key on your keyboard. And of course, it wouldn't be a good scale
Speaker A
semiconductors. It's wild. All right, another 100x shrink. So now it's getting ridiculous. I am now 2 micrometers tall. At this point, I'm actually literally invisible to the human eye, which kind of feels like a superpower. But I'll also need to be
Speaker A
video without a banana for scale. So got that, too. But at this size, okay, like, I can walk around on the keyboard deck of this MacBook Pro, which is now the size of an apartment building, and I can already start to see and appreciate
Speaker A
I could live comfortably inside a single groove of a vinyl record and a 1 millm droplet of water would feel like a massive lake. This this is the scale that bacteria live at. It's funny because physics also starts to behave
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how complex all these components already are. And RAM and storage have been ridiculously small for years now. And so we've got eight terabytes of it. Uh, and the M5 chip should be right over here, powering the whole thing. Now, this is
Speaker A
world would look kind of blurry and wavy. But somehow by the 1980s, humans have found a way to consistently manufacture functional electronics at this size. Just like clockwork, Moore's law continues to see dramatic and consistent improvements of the
Speaker A
the size of a single transistor in 1948. This is pretty insane. Like, we've clearly made a lot of progress in the last 75 years. You don't need me to tell you that. But this already puts it into perspective, like, how far we've come
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Windows XP is the most widely used desktop operating system. Good times. But if you can believe it, we have to shrink down 100x yet again.
Speaker A
since a computer was the size of a room. And one more thing I want to at least highlight here. Technology only gets better because of the people working really hard on it. Like, without this hard work, none of this improvement
Speaker A
because Apple's not going to share their exact chip architecture with me making a YouTube video. But still, the smallest parts of it are still smaller than me.
Speaker A
happens. But because we do have all these brilliant minds focused on computers, we have things like Moore's law, which I'm sure you've heard of. It says that the number of transistors on a microchip roughly doubles every two years.
Speaker A
pretty refined manufacturing process called photoiththography. Basically, it's like developing a photo with light projected through a microscope but onto atoms instead of film. And that is how you end up with billions of these inside a computer that you can sit on your lap. Now, to be
Speaker A
And that's stayed about true since the beginning of the semiconductor industry, which means [music] we have a long way to go.
Speaker A
Speaking of appreciating it, hey, this is Epic Spaceman, one of my favorite creators and of course a massive help with this video. He's been down to this scale before in another video and it's a pretty crazy view, right?
Speaker A
Okay. Wow. Welcome to the scale of micrometers. I am now 200 micrometers tall [music], which makes me about twice as tall as this human hair is thick. This is already the size of some of the tiniest stuff we're able to see using
Speaker A
times bigger than this. So yeah, the best way for my brain to really appreciate all of this has been to visualize this scale from the tiniest 3 nanometer transistors we have in computers today at the scale of DNA and
Speaker A
our own eyes. But yeah, a typical sheet of paper is about 100 micrometers thick.
Speaker A
grain of rice look like a massive object. And yet it keeps going and going all the way back to the earliest transistors the size of a deck of cards.
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Looks pretty tall to me. A glass screen protector, too, thicker than a lot of people realize. But what's crazy is that first transistor I told you about is now the height of the tallest building in the world compared to me. So, here, next
Speaker A
sometimes it's actually easier to make things bigger rather than smaller. So let's try this. The world's first electronic computer is often credited as the Eniac. They finished it in 1946 and they had light bulb sized vacuum tubes called triodes. And of course, that
Speaker A
to me now is a transistor from 1968, 20 years later. Moore's law says that that's enough time for the number of transistors per chip to double 10 times [music], which means they've cut the size of a transistor in half, 10 times. Now,
Speaker A
Think about it. Maybe the size of a city block. Or what about the size of the entirety of Central Park? Keep in mind you need to fit all these billions of transistors. Wouldn't it be crazy if we carry around the equivalent technology
Speaker A
computers in 1968 were still primarily used by governments and research labs and [music] were still the size of rooms and cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. This is still pre-internet, but they've already come this far since the earliest days of
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Jersey to fit them all. This progression of technology has given us a computer the size of a [music] US state 270 mi long and shrunk it down to fit in our pockets.
Speaker A
semiconductors. It's wild. All right, another 100x shrink. So now it's getting ridiculous. I am now 2 micrometers tall. At this point, I'm actually literally invisible to the human eye, which kind of feels like a superpower. But I'll also need to be
Speaker A
ridiculously small individual transistors have [music] gotten since the beginning of computers. These numbers are crazy and sometimes [music] hard to appreciate when you just see them flashed for two seconds on a keynote slide. So hopefully this gives you a better idea. The crazy part is
Speaker A
very careful, because a human hair is like a cliff the size of a 25-story building. A single grain of rice at this scale would be the size of Mount Rainier.
Speaker A
So it's all pretty crazy. But if you'd be interested in more videos going deep on this exact type of incredible scale definitely check out the Epic Spaceman channel. His recent videos were 100% of the inspiration to make this video. And
Speaker A
I could live comfortably inside a single groove of a vinyl record, and a 1 millimeter droplet of water would feel like a massive lake. This is the scale that bacteria live at. It's funny, because physics also starts to behave
Speaker A
See you in the next one. Peace.
Topics:Apple M5transistorsMoore's lawsemiconductorschip scalenanometerphotolithographycomputer historyMarques Brownleemicrochips
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