Gadgetory

Silicon Valley that part of California where CPUs are designed startups flourish and no one can afford to buy a house but did you ever stop to think about why it's called Silicon Valley why exactly does Silicon seem to be so universally used for electronics instead of some other material like copper graphite or potato well silicon has a number of properties that make it unusual among chemical elements right now scientists know 118 elements and of those only six are commonly classified as metalloids silicon being one of them these metalloids exhibit metal-like characteristics but aren't true metals usually they have a silvery shiny look like true metals but instead of being malleable they're often quite brittle meaning they can break apart easily and although they can conduct electricity like metals they aren't quite as good at it which is where the word semiconductor comes from this semi conductivity is especially important because while obviously computers and other things that use microchips need electricity to run their whole principle of operation relies on being able to let electricity pass through certain transistors selectively which you can learn more about in this video a normal metallic conductor would let electrons through too easily meaning way too many transistors would light up at once and your CPU wouldn't be able to process instructions correctly which is okay if you want your computer to serve as a very expensive paperweight or a cheap one I guess as it were which is all fine and good then Linus but you still haven't answered the question why silicon specifically instead of some other semiconductor like germanium well although Silicon Valley might be an expensive place to live actual silicon is quite cheap and it's also pretty easy to find in the Earth's crust in fact silicon is one of the most common elements in the universe so it's fully possible that spacefaring nations in some distant galaxies are using silicon CPUs to play plants vs. humans or whatever silicon also has other benefits such as being able to operate well at a wide temperature range stock coolers am i right and it can be easily doped with other chemicals that are necessary for micro processors to work for example it's quite easy to form an insulating layer of silicon dioxide just by sticking silicon into a hot furnace the tiny transistors in a cpu need insulated areas to further control and direct the flow of electricity with precision so silicon's versatility makes it a natural choice but even though silicon has proven to be extremely useful it is not perfect although it's cheap and abundant there is a trade-off with how quickly it can conduct electricity other semiconducting materials can move the electrons around faster meaning that they could be used to make higher performance processors albeit at a higher cost and another limitation of silicon will mean that it will not be the universal material in our processors for too much longer transistors keep being made smaller and smaller and smaller in order to make our chips more powerful and more power efficient but we're getting to the point where silicon can't be made into transistors much smaller than what we have already due to its chemical properties in fact intel has already announced that for its seven nanometer chips that could be released around 2020 it will be using something other than silicon to put that in context 7 nanometers is only about 35 atoms wide pugh so there you have it while smaller transistors and faster CPUs may require more exotic materials there's no doubt that the path to this future of tomorrow was paved with silicon I mean quite literally really if you think about it they used to use it in like pottery and bricks they still do use it in bricks if you count like minecraft speaking of bricks let's say you work as like a freelance bricklayer or you do on the side computer work or you run a small dance studio out of your garage whatever it is that you do as a freelancer or small business owner it shouldn't be wasting time with complicated accounting software and that is where fresh books comes in fresh books is designed to save you time and help you use the time that you save to make more money or have more of a life and they've got a whole new platform that's been redesigned for the way you work to be simpler and easier than ever before not to mention helping you get paid more quickly you can create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds you can set up online payments with just a couple of clicks and get paid up to four days faster and you can even see when your client has seen your invoice and put an end to the oh did you send that to me oh gee I guess I'll check with Jill from accounting and see if we could play that eventually no no wrong so fresh books is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to our viewers and to claim that all you have to do is head to fresh books comm slash tech quickie and enter tech quickie in me how did you hear about a section so thanks for watching guys if you like this video like it if you disliked it dislike it if you want to check out our channel so I have a featured video right about there and you can leave a comment with video suggestions down there and you can subscribe and follow wherever in all the ways