I shrunk down into an M5 chip

Introduction to Apple's M-Series Chips and Transistor Scale00:00

Every year, Apple unveils the latest version of their computer chips: M1, M2, M3, M4, and now M5. Graphics show impossibly big numbers of transistors on a chip in a handheld device. To appreciate billions of transistors in a pocket-sized device, shrink down in scale, opposite to scale-of-the-universe videos. No generative AI used; created with Blender. Shrink by 100 times (two orders of magnitude) each finger snap.

First Shrink: Keyboard Scale01:31

At 6'3" (2 m tall), gadgets fit in hands. 100x smaller: size of a single key on keyboard. MacBook Pro keyboard deck size of apartment building. 8 terabytes RAM and storage. M5 chip powers it, size of single 1948 transistor. Progress in 75 years from room-sized computers.

Technology improves due to hard work by brilliant minds, leading to Moore's law: number of transistors on a microchip roughly doubles every 2 years, true since semiconductor industry start.

Micrometer Scale: Human Hair and Early Transistors03:00

200 micrometers tall, twice as thick as human hair. Sheet of paper ~100 micrometers thick. Glass screen protector thicker than realized. 1948 transistor now height of tallest building. 1968 transistor: 20 years later, Moore's law doubles transistors 10 times, halving size 10 times. 1968 computers for governments/research labs, room-sized, cost hundreds of thousands to millions, pre-internet.

2 Micrometer Scale: Bacterial World04:30