Author: Stan Eisenstat
Subject: Re: [Cs323] Chip size constraint
Date: Tuesday, 20 Oct 2020, 19:52:39

    > Message Posted By: Unknown
    >
    > How does the speed of electron / light limit how small a chip could be (as
    > mentioned in class)?

The size of a gate and the number of gates needed to
implement the CPU determine the size of the chip.  The
speed of light gives a lower bound on how quickly
information can travel between two most distant points
on the chip, which is a lower bound on the time to
execute some instructions.

--Stan-