• Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Am I stupid or is a transistor a very different thing from a chip? Like, a chip has lots of transistors on it, but comparing them is still rather non-sensical…?

    • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      it’s more accurate to say that the transistors are etched from (or carved out of) the chip than saying that there are transistors on the chip and the size & number are indicators of the technology that has been invented, manufactured, and employed to create them.

      every level that we scale to represents the bleeding edge of real world scientific capability for a company and a country and our capitalist society makes these endeavors profitable at the cost of our privacy, security, health and environment.

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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        21 hours ago

        Sure, but so it’s still non-sensical to compare a transistor to a whole chip. That’s like saying a trumpet is louder than an orchestra.

        1. No, it just isn’t.
        2. If we’re somehow talking about an orchestra made up of lots of trumpet players being louder than a traditional orchestra, like alright, but then we still gotta figure out what it actually looks like in an orchestra. Does this new transistor actually use less space, for example? What’s the price for it? And so on…
        • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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          4 hours ago

          the analogy to an orchestra could only work if the trumpets were molded out of the orchestra and the orchestra only consisted of trumpets; then comparing a single trumpet would make sense since you’re comparing it to other trumpets in different orchestras.