Term of the Moment
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Definition: head of a pin
The surface area of the head of a straight pin is approximately one square millimeter, and today's most advanced chips can contain more than 100 million transistors in that tiny space. Imagine 100 million (and more) transistors wired together in logical patterns on more than a dozen layers in an area no larger than one square millimeter. See chip, transistor and process technology.
100,000,000+ Transistors on a Pinhead
The Amazing Chip
People have a hard time wrapping their minds around even a million transistors in the space of a pinhead, let alone 100 million.
The pin represents one square millimeter, and the postage stamp represents the total area of all the transistors in a typical CPU chip today. These two comparisons are cited multiple times in the PowerPoint presentation created by Alan Freedman, author of this encyclopedia. See active area.