Just when I think I am learning something about computers I get tripped up on some basic issue. This month it happened to be chips. I realized that in the course of conversation I might hear or even say something about chips, microchips or microprocessors and I would have absolutely no idea what I was talking about. Therefore, I was forced to do chip research.
Chip research is extremely difficult and complex.
I began with a survey to see what people already knew or believed about chips. The chip experts turned out to be my children and their friends. It seems that chip performance is really in the mouth of the eater. For some, the neat, stackable Pringles chip performs well. For most the Frito, which is efficiently bite sized and has a salty corn flavor, is perfect. The Four Cheese Doritos also received high marks, despite their awkward-to-fit-in-your-mouth triangular shape, because of their spicy-cheese coating.
When I stripped away the flavor and shape as, though, I found the basic chip, a thin slice of some tasty food product that served as an excellent base for all of the fancy stuff.
It turns out that a computer chip is just the same — a thin slice of a semi-conductor material which is the base for transistors. Currently the material of choice for computer chips is silicon, although other materials including special plastics are being used experimentally.
Silicon is a semi-conductor of electricity. It can conduct electricity (allow electrons to pass through it) or stop electrical flow depending on slight alterations to the silicon crystal.
Intel has a wonderful website (Intel.com/education…visit the Intel museum) that outlines how a silicon wafer, a thin sheet of silicon can be turned into chips. The process involves using ultraviolet light to expose circuit pathways on the silicon. The ultraviolet light causes the silicon to change to “photo resist,” a soft substance that can be etched away with special chemicals.
The silicon wafer is exposed to the UV light through various stencils (called masks), which eventually leaves a complex pattern of etched lines that can conduct electricity. The lines are connected in specific and complex ways to create transistors, which control the flow of current or electricity between two terminals.
In the case of computer chips, these transistors are microscopic. The etched line of the transistor might be about 220 nanometers in width, about 300 times more narrow than a human hair.
A silicon wafer is made to be sliced into hundreds of chips. Each chip may hold almost 10 million transistors or electrical switches.
The term microprocessor is sometimes used interchangeably with the word chip or microchip, but it generally refers to the function of the transistors working together, not just the physical silicon chip. The on-off flow of electricity through the millions of transistors creates the 0 or 1 binary code (bits) that join together to create digital data. The transistors move bits around the chip based on instructions which may come from any input device such as a keyboard, mouse or CD ROM. The transistor pathways move the bits to the Arithmetic/Logic Unit (ALU) or to multiple memory sites to allow the data to be manipulated or stored.
Another name for the microprocessor is the Central Processing Unit (CPU).
When dealing with my kind of chips it is clear that less is more. The less fat the better. Fritos have 200 calories per serving with 13 grams of fat. I prefer Baked Lay’s which may taste a bit like silicon, but they have only 110 calories per serving and 1.5 grams of fat.
Computer chip technology has rapidly advanced to offer more for less. In 1993 the original Pentium chip held 3,100,000 transistors able to perform 100 million instructions per second. The Pentium III chip holds 9,500,000 transistors and performs around 1 billion instructions per second.
The goal in the computer chip industry has been to double the number of transistors or processors on a microchip every two years. New ways to etch smaller, thinner circuits are being tried including using individual photons to etch the transistor patterns on the silicon.
So, you’re in the grocery store facing a long line of chips. What do you do?
If you want something trim and light, definitely go baked. If you prefer a workhorse, if you want to get as much in your mouth as quickly as possible and weight is not an issue, then go for the Fritos. If you want value, the most for your money, I must suggest Four Cheese Doritos. And just like Intel inside, they are all made by Frito-Lay.