Real engineering, I don't know if you're going to read this but PLEASE keep making videos. You are one of the few channels that actually explains things without simplifying it to the point that it's incorrect.
Real Engineering You are seriously a great youtuber, and unlike some others, your accent isn't so heavy that its hard to understand. You simplify things well, and your explanations make sense.
Except that in this case he is incorrect as he explained bipolar transistors and they are not used in processors or FPGAs any more. CMOS or NMOS has been the route most companies have been going down for decades. The first commercial transistors used gallium not silicon and the Field Effect Transistor has been around at least in the lab since 1925 and patented in 1926.
Those pieces of silicon are the most complex objects ever made by mankind. Your modern CPU has tens of billions of transistors packed into a few square centimeters, each capable of switching on and off billions of times a second. The process of making them can only be described as black magic.
Actually, the first transistors were germanium, not silicon. And other materials have been tried as well, e.g. gallium arsenide. Also note that the “doping” process uses such tiny traces of the additional elements to make such a big change to its electrical properties, the substrate would still for many purposes be considered “chemically pure”.
The transistor described here is the junction transistor. But the device used in most digital ICs is the field-effect transistor, which operates more like a vacuum tube.
They are all based on the same principles, some are current controlled and some are voltage controlled, some has current gain, some have voltage gain. The junction transistor led to not just FETs, but also BJTs and numerous other structures. The current silicon based transistors are a modification of the MOSFET, called a FinFET (invented at UC Berkeley) which itself has been modified.
@stevenvanhulle7242 The Mosfet is a brute but esd's can destroy it in a heart beat. I've repaired many car audio amplifiers and too many to recall a number of such. But I do recall one customer saying he and a friend was listening to his booming stereo system playing Blackmores rainbow and there was a lightning strike very close by and stereo stopped working from that point. I replaced all mosfets and fast rectifiers in power supply circuits in both Coustic brand amps that he used.
I had a physics class taught by Dr. Brattain at Whitman College in the 1970s. I was having trouble with calculus and he took the time to show me and made it seem so simple that I was able grasp it. . I have always been grateful to him for that.
Wait until you understand the complexity of a single human cell or even the RNA! Human brain is far more complicated than the understanding it gained about the human brain!! Barely scratched the surface!!
Age about 12, in about 1967, we learned about both the chemistry and the mathematics behind this. Transistor radios had become commonplace so we all knew about the concept. Has education gone backwards since then or were you not paying attention? I'm only slightly above average IQ, certainly no brain box
I've only known about semiconductors for a week now through an introductory computer hardware course and some google searches on CPUs. I understood this video. I probably wouldn't have 8 days ago though 😄
The line about running into the issue of quantum tunneling when trying to make transistors smaller blew my mind and really put into perspective how truly small they are. Like quantum physics, a form of physics that is so unlike classical physics, the thing people watch videos on and will most likely never even think to actually encounter, is becoming a hard barrier for computer chips, something we use every day… woah..
I'm 55 and started in analog. I was in tech college at 17 and designed and built my first phono preamp at 16. This is the best description of transistors and electrons and holes I've seen. Great job.
I would also say that fire was always there, we just learned how to harness its power. The transistor is something we created. I think that is significant.
All technology is the result of identifying and harnessing natural phenomena. We didn't invent fire, we just learned how to control it. Same for electricity, and same for transistors, we didn't invent the semi conductor effect, it has always existed, we just noticed it and then learned how to control it for our purposes.
I fell like you skipped how you turn transistors into logic gates which was a kinda key part of the simple-to-complex story you told. Thanks for the video though.
the two simplest ones are the and and or gates. for an "and" gate, imagine two switches in a row, both need to be on for the circuit to be complete giving a value of 1. If one of them is off, there is no current, and the value is 0. For an "or" gate, it's two switches in parallel. As long as one (or both) is on, the circuit is again complete. other gates get more complicated, but that should give you a basic idea. Hope it helps!
XOR (eXclusive OR) is like a pair of light switches for one room - Either switch On = Light On. Both switches On ~OR~ Off = Light Off. That is: 00 = 0, 01 = 1, 10 = 1, 11 = 0.
I understand what you're saying but as someone with a degree in Electrical Engineering I found it easy enough to follow. Obviously it goes without saying that's because I already know how that step works. But honestly, the way he describes how the electrons move and how the transistor works I felt like I had an epiphany or something. I never once had it click like that for me and all of a sudden those first semesters of class make more sense
I watched the video 3 years ago in covid lockdown when I was in 9th grade. I didn't understand it properly. Today after 3 years I watched this video again to know how transistors worked and it was so easy to understand . To all the folks who watched the video but did not understand a thing, keep hustling and it will be fine
come on it is like a fucking mechanical stwich or relay only that's electronic and switched thousands millions times per second with a hyper fast finger, a quarz reloj pulse.
To be fair, this video assumes you already have some knowledge of how electronics works, so for someone already familiar with this kind of thing it is simple. For the rest of us.....not so much.
3:55 n-types are not negatively charged as they still contain the same number of electrons and protons. The n in the name simply refers to the valence electrons that can move inside the crystal structure
N-type silicon (donor doped, with a group 5 element) have an extra (donor) electron in their lattice, this makes them net negative. P-type silicon (acceptor doped, with a group 3 element) have a missing electron (acceptor) in their lattice which is represented as a moving “hole” with a positive charge, this makes them net positive.
@@richardramos5124 No it doesn't make them net-negative or net-positive. Remember if I dope the wafer with let's assume Phosphorous, it will give 1 extra electron to lattice but it will still carry the same positive charge in it's nucleus.
This is awesome! I just learned this in my physics 2 class and observing this video and understanding how electric charges can be manipulated so easily is incredibly eye opening. The universe itself is like an electric circuit…I truly wish we could observe the movement of charged particles with our naked eye! Thank you for this channel!
@@crod6431 nowadays electrical engineering and computer engineering are a joint degree. I'm planning on taking a masters in electrical & computer engineering after my BC in physics.
3:55 N-Type and P-Type are actually not negatively or positively charged respectively, since the impurities used for the doping (typically phosphorous and Boron), along with the extra or missing electron also bring an extra or missing proton resulting on a still neutral alloy. N-Type means that the element used to improve the conductivity is the electron while P-Type uses "holes" or the space left behind by electrons while moving across the semiconductor. Nice video though, +1
Yeah but commonly in electronics semiconductors get assigned positive and negative notations regardless, and the material with extra electrons gets called positive for the sake of keeping it within the bounds of naming conventions, not necessarily because it is charged.
Isn't it ironic how your phone is made of silicone a product of sand which is product of sand rock. The Bible states that when man refuses to praise God the trees and rocks will begin praising him.
The secret that most of us know and dont say is it isn't THE it is ONE OF THE. There is a chain, fire gave us warmth and better food which allowed our brains to grow better. The Levers, The Wheel, The Printing Press. Actually James Burke did a series a long time ago that covered this well. Great video, Cant wait to see more!
This is one of the BEST explanations of how computers work. Everyone just does conceptual stuff like graphically representing logic gates and droning on about binary without touching on what a transistor is or what it looks like and how it's made and what it's made of. Nice job showing what's really going on. Now could you walk through how programming hello world or something like that actually translates through a modern computer all the way down to the hardware itself?
Depends on the area of electronics you are working in. Germanium transistors (bipolar) are being further researched in labs for ultra low noise applications, Gallium Arsenide for MMIC high frequency circuits, silicon carbide for high temperature semiconductors, and I am personally looking at valve triodes for some applications where semiconductors have too many disadvantages. I personally have a stock of OA95 diodes (about 150) because you just cannot get a silicon equivalent. Solid core memory is preferable to modern semiconductor memory in a very few applications, and the only two technologies I believe to be truly obsolete are Integrated Injection Logic (see TI TMS 9900 from early 80;s) and loop memory and I could be wrong on the second.
I already knew most of the information in the video. Despite this, you avoided dumbing-down any of the information in the video, while having much better diagrams than any of the places that I learnt this stuff from. Congrats on a video well made
yeah I was a bit iffy with making this video, since there are so many on the subject already. I put a stupid amount of effort into the animations, in the hopes that would make it the best video on the subject.
This helped me a lot , as a construction engineer i know a thing or two about physics , but this was the first time i understood how vacuum tubes work (because of the animation). THANK YOU!
My teacher couldn't explain to me how the semi-conductor works. He kept talking about "donors" and "holes" but I didn't understand a thing. Few years later it all makes sense :D
@@keppa3635 While there is no "Charge" that naturally exists in either of the doped materials, atom-for-atom there are more electrons in the N-type material (and fewer in the P-type material) than in pure silicon.
@@dalexplym4882 But that's not what positive/negative charge is. A material is positively charged if it has more protons than electrons. In both P-type and N-type material, they have/lack an extra electron but the electron/proton balance is still 0 meaning both types are neutral in charge.
This is such a good video. You've no idea how many "what are semiconfuctors/transistors" videos I've watched and not quite gotten it, but this was the one that got me to understand.
the n type and p type are not actually negative, they are both neutral, but their prefixes refer to the type of charges that move around. For the n type, there is an extra electron than there would be if there were all silicon atoms, however since the phosphorus has a neutral valence shell of 5, it remains neutral. This electron can them move around making other silicon atoms negative and phosphorus positive but the total charge remains neutral. in the p type all the other electrons move around and it seems as though the positive charge is moving.
Awesome illustation for an Electrical Engineer like me (I barely remembered this stuff after 5 years of working in different field). I would recommend to open up explanations more and a bit of more time to comprehend to let others benefit from your great content.
a mild correction: n-type semiconductor aren't negatively charged. Similarly p-type semiconductors aren't positively charged either, both of them are neutral. The initials just represent the type of charge which is conducted when applied a voltage on the crystal. That implies in the case of n-types the charge that's being conducted is electron(-ve), and In the case of p-types their is no actual long distance conduction of electron, it's the absence of electron which can can be taken as a movement of positive charge, but overall the crystal is neutral. P.S : still an amazing video, love your content.
Don't feel bad. The narrator assumes you have mastered 1st year physics, chemistry, and electronics. This is therefore more a building upon that foundation.
I understood better than my professors explained. Maybe the video helped, but also the explanations are quite clear. Maybe your mind is not too into "mathematics". Maybe you're an artist. (no joke, no disrespect here)
@@esotericmelody9718 I didn't understand the "Carry" part , cos AND gives 1 when both are 1 and 0 when both are 0, so AND should give 1+1 = 1 while XOR would give 1+1 = 0 ( I'm talking abt the second box in the 4-bit 11 binary code) , so 1 from AND and 0 from XOR should give 1 in 2nd box, I dont understand how the 1 carries forward to the 1st box. Please explain this Also, i m addressing the boxes from left to right...
Me learning to become an auto tech: Negative signals gives us zero and positive gives us one! Engineer: Yeah that works in cars, but this is actually how this works. Me: Uh... ok, I think.
@@ShayPatrickCormacTHEHUNTERwell no, they are referring to the fact fire is a natural occurrence, it has existed long before us and will continue to without us, vacuum tubes are not a natural occuring object
@@sebastianfischer2082 The fact that elements can be rearranged into a vacuum tube, means not that vacuum tubes were created (invented). Rather that we discovered how to rearrange existing matter to make a vacuum tube. Everything is a discovery.
***** Yeah but for now its far too expensive. We have been waiting for carbon nanotube breakthroughs for 25 years but it proves to be just another expensive technology far ahead of its time. Its awesome and all, that we have carbon nanotube technology but I think its worth it for us to put our efforts into other technology that could help in CPU development as well as Carbon nanotube transistors
I'm working for ASML as a mechanical design engineer on the latest generation of IC lithography machines. And we're very much struggling to get to 13.5 nm, so the current FET designs are still applicable for more than 5 years.
@@ketanpatil935 EUV is now fully up and running, they're now looking into expanding towards high NA machines. Most development now goes into reliability related stuff.
Great video! Additionally, thermal challenges caused by the decreasing size, increasing density, power consumption and inadequate cooling techniques (mainly convection with air, and watercooling more recently) are also causing the decline in performance improvements with each iteration. Splitting the cpu’s into different cores managed to increase computing power further, but the performance on a single core basis hasn’t really improved that much since around 05/06 :)
I'm not sure if you know what you did here, but in this video you explained in 8 minutes, the literal foundation of what makes the world turn, in a way that I literally don't have any questions. It's astonishing, I've been bashing my head with this question for months, and you just sat down, and explained it in 8 minutes. I feel so thankful for this video.
Except that cheaper AMD processors can't compare to Intel in power, and the ones that do are comparable to Intel in price. There really is no difference.
@@imaginarystranger1974 Really? A 22C/44T 2.2GHz Xeon processor (E5-2699) Costs $4115 USD, in comparison, a 32C/64T 3.5GHz Threadripper processor (TR3970X) costs $1900 USD, so at less than half the price, it has a 1.3 GHz higher base clock (I'll ignore boost clock for this) and 10 more cores, there is a difference.
@@imaginarystranger1974 man sales say it all , AMD is cheaper , consumes lesser power, providers much better performance, "yes even in single threaded applications " and this is just Zen2 aka Ryzen 3000 , zen3 will be more of this!
I would argue that fire is not an invention per se, it's only a discovery. Transistors are indeed an invention, so if we're talking about an invention that changed the world, it would be transistors and not fire.
That was very informative. Probably the first time in 50 years someone has broken down the fundamentals of how transistors make a computer work. The demonstration of the half adder was very helpful.
Excellent introduction! A couple minor nitpicks (from a long-time EE): - N-type silicon is not negatively charged; it just has an excess of electrons not bound into the crystalline lattice. They are therefore very easy to disassociate from their atomic nuclei to conduct electricity. - NPN transistors are not really particularly common nowadays. By far the most common are MOSFETs, which by the way, behave even more like vacuum tubes. They are, essentially, voltage-controlled resistors: the “channel” through which current conducts, is all one type of Silicon, and is intrinsically an insulator. However, the third “gate” terminal can pull carriers (electrons or “holes”) into the channel making it much more conductive - “turning it on,” so to speak. Nevertheless, great video!
You mention Gordon Moore but totally neglect to credit the person responsible for developing the first transistor William Shockley. Without William Shockley silicon valley wouldn't be what it is today.
And yet his two boys, Bardeen and Brittain, demonstrated the "Crystadyne" to the Bell Lab honchos when William was away on vacation. He was furious when he found out. So the device was not patentable but the theory as to why it worked was. And the rest is history...
"As a co-inventor of the transistor, William Shockley brought silicon to Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, he was also an unrepentant racist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. But in later years, despite a complete lack of formal education in biology and genetics, Shockley tried to use these fields of study to support a set of racist ideas known as eugenics. In particular, he warned of “retrogressive evolution” because he believed blacks were reproducing faster than what he considered to be intellectually superior whites. His proposed “solutions” included replacing the welfare system with financial incentives for “genetically disadvantaged” individuals to allow themselves to be sterilized." - National Geographic news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151005-nobel-laureates-forget-racist-sexist-science/
@@RageIt And everything he predicted is happening today. Nobody ever really debated him, they just booed and screamed and physically attacked him when he spoke. And, of course, everybody claiming that he was wrong and that genetics has nothing to do with intelligence also have a "complete lack of formal education in biology and genetics," but you don't mind someone's lack of formal education in a field as long as they agree with you, huh?
@@pbjbagel Dysgenics. The useless takers outbreeding the useful producers and the catastrophic misery it will end in. The stupid breeding with the stupid to create endless generations of unemployable incapables full of resentment and rage at their betters.
there's smart and then there's a whole other level of smart im very thankful for truly Intelligent people throughout modern history we've come a very long way in the past hundred years with technology but i could never create a CPU or microscopic transistor but im stoked that people do
You go to the beach and get some sand. Melt that sand and rapidly cool it to form a crystaline silicone structure. Remove the crystaline segments onto a new container - repeat a few times untill the silicon percentage is near max. Next, add your choice of cation or anion atom in a 1 to 10 ratio to your silicon (add more to increase conductivity). Repeat everything to form new (usually 3) varying conductivity layers and ion boundaries. Make sure the surrounding material enclosing the silicon is non-conductive. Finally, add a copper trail leading to the silicone mixture from a power source. The electrons will move from the cathode to the anode towards the silicon's electron deprived layer, but only if the middle layer has a low electron potential energy (electron deficient) if it's being supplied by voltage by a different circuit (rich in electrons) it won't allow the original circuit to form (this part was explained in the vid).
Give yourself a break. When I went through electrical engineering, there were a lot of classes with a lot of detail material to build up to transistor theory and application. Short answer: he left a lot out of his explanation. If he didn't his video would be unbearably long.
@@charlessmith6412 Haha, I also went through EE. Many people in the comments don't realize how much there is to learn about these things, the fact that it's not always going to be fun and the amount of discipline needed.
I don't think the NPN transistor is not the most prevalent transistor in the world. Computers are using MOSFET transistors which are constructed a little differently.
Well, in the end all semiconductor structures are made up of n-type and p-type material next to each other. But the working principle of a bipolar transistor and a FET are very different. A BJT is a current controlled switch, a FET is a voltage controlled switch.
I was watching a video for beginners, on how to build a basic circuit on a bread board. I got lost understanding the different gates and combinations... Your vid has freed me from that confusion and while I still don't fully understand what I'm learning, I'm no longer stuck. Thank you so much.
I wish I could learn like I could when I was a kid. I just realized this is sponsored by The Great Courses. I have their course on electronics and I've watched the DVD lectures on transistors at least 20 times, it's really fantastic, but it's so hard for me to learn complex things at 40. 3:59 mentions doping, and the TGC lesson spends the time to clearly explain that term, and many other things. I learned how to rebuild my weedwhacker recently and it was easy to learn and remember. This shit, I can understand, but it's way over my head. Obviously I'm here because I'm still trying to learn anyway. I've rewatched from 3:40 several times now, and it's using simplicity to tie together the more complex TGC lesson on this and I'm finally getting it.
Try supplementing with creatine (start on a low amount until your guts get used to it, and drink plenty of water) and ginkgo biloba. Both are clinically proven to do wonders for your memory.
If you’re a fan of the Fallout universe you should know that the difference that split their world from hours is the fact that the transistor is never invented in their world. Causing humanity to advance towards robotics and nuclear based machines instead of computers. That’s why everything is so futuristic while at the same time TV’s and computers look like they’re from the 50’s. It’s fiction but it’s fun to speculate that that could have been a viable alternate reality.
Good thing i took some IT course, otherwise i would not understand what he said. People if you don't know what he is talking about then watch crashcourse computer science.
Great video! But I think you forgot to mention exactly why you think the transistor did more for the human kind than the invention of fire? For the record I completely agree. Computers have done so incredibly much for us within the lifetime of most of us today, and we've barely scratched the surface of what we can do with it. Didn't mind the lack of music btw. Didn't even notice until you pointed it out.
Wasn't aiming to argue which is best. There is no one invention that I could identify as best, each branch of the technology tree is important. I just wanted to draw a comparison between fires impact on our society and the transistor. They both had huge impacts on the evolution of our culture and societies.
I don't especially disagree. There is no way to quantify what invention did the most, and any opinion is equally correct (or equally incorrect for that matter). And like you said, each important invention is required for us to get to the next one, somewhat like the tech tree in the Civilization games. However I'm still going to claim the transistor is bigger. Yes, it requires electricity, which required industry, which required melting and forging, which required fire (more or less), but while all those have greatly impacted our society, the transistor is changing our society from noticeably in only a couple of decades to the point of not being recognizable for anyone who hasn't lived it. And we've only scratched the surface of what it can do. While all of the previous mentioned technologies are required to make it, the transistor is the end product (or descendant of, if we start using something that, say, takes 3 states instead of only 2). It's going to change in many ways, but the the idea of a computer storing numbers isn't going to go away in any foreseeable future. Or maybe I'm just a dumb person who's can't see past the present because I'm living in it. My forefathers might have thought the exact same thing as me about anything important in their life.
I would have argue that the steam engine was a greater invention as it was the first time that man could harness power without being constraint by a location (like windmill and watermill where) or an animal. For the same reason some would argue that wind and water mill are important too because it was the first time that we harness the force of nature to work for us. But yes, the transistor is definitely up there in the great invention of mankind. The question is more to know if it will stay as a milestone or just a step replaced by an even more important successor like the vacuum tube was replaced by the transistor.
I'm a Computer Engineer, got straight 10's in the Semiconductors class when I was an undergraduate, and I still scratch my head over this shit. You're not alone.
I'm studying electrical engineering atm, and I can tell you, transistors are easy. You only need to understand the basic concept once. Static CMOS logic design is the most straightforward, that is elementary school stuff.
Voltage between the base and the emitter controls the current between the collector and the emitter (there's close to zero current on the base). If you only change the base voltage by a few millivolts, it acts like a linear amplifier (voltage controlled current source). If you change it by the volts, it's basically a switch. Base on high voltage -> collector on low voltage (because collector-emitter acts like a short circuit); base on low voltage -> collector on high voltage (because collector-emitter acts like an infinite resistance) (assuming that the collector is connected to VCC through a resistor, and the emitter is connected to GND, which is almost always the case).
If you talk about BJTs they don't amplify voltage or control the current using the base voltage but they amplify the base current. The base current is actually fairly high. MOSFETS have near to 0 gate currents but then you were not talking about mosfets.
Technology has changed a lot from when I started working first with valves then transistors and onto integrated circuits. I recall early LCD and LED technology. Amazing times.
I'd say written language - that's what allowed us to pass on information to future generations even if we were to die young, meaning knowledge was never lost and we could always build on previous information.
I cannot wait for that day and truly I’m excited for it, I wonder what kind of world we’ll be living in, what will computers look like? Will they be heavier or lighter? How did we use computing in different fields of research, manufacturing, engineering and what not. All these possibilities and we are coming so close to it. Man what a world we live in
♫♪Ludwig van Beethoven♪♫ I wouldn’t entirely count on that some people thought the computer wouldn’t replace the typewriter but here we are. Only time will tell, if costs and the space required to make them and use them goes down enough along with finding ways to create a good graphical interface for normal users then well, it will happen and it just might but I prefer to wait and see how tech develops in 20-30 years just always remember in 1969 we landed on the moon and 50 years later their computers can’t even compare to the shittiest phones in computing power.
Thanks for the video. Congratulations. 😎👍 I just want to mention that the npn bipolar junction transistor (BJT) that you showin the video is mainly used in old logic families like TTL, today used in a few applications. The MOSFET, in which CMOS technology is based (present in almost all microelectronic devices today) has other structure and functions in a different way, maybe closer to the triode vacuum tube that you showed.
I think the most incredible invention of all time is agriculture. Imagine struggling to survive with barely enough to eat and somehow convincing yourself and others that instead of eating your food it would be a good idea to bury it in the ground.
Actually, if it wasn't for overpopulation and over-hunting, we would still be hunter/gatherers. And agriculture had a lot of downsides: the diet wasn't less varied, more time had to spend on work, especially in the beginning it was actually far less reliable for food gathering due to crop failures - the protection of the crops was very lacking after all: insects, sickness, weather... All could destroy your harvest and you would be starving. Hunter/gatherers did certainly not struggle to survive. Anthropologists today argue that they knew damn well that plants grow when you bury seeds. If you look to hunter/gatherers today, they have more leisure time than we do, or the first farmers would've had. The transition towards agricultural society was also not very fast, but went very gradually. There were even native American hunter/gatherer tribes who grew tobacco but not a single other crop. Of course, without agriculture we wouldn't have advanced as much as a society, but back then it wasn't as appealing as you seem to think.
mrbandishbhoir Yeah, of course larger population were supported by the agricultural revolution. However, the reason the first farmers had to change from a hunter/gatherer society to an agricultural one was because of overpopulation. Overpopulation is exactly that: the land can't sustain the amount of people anymore based on a certain economic model or method of getting food. Hunter/gatherers made a slow transition towards agriculture because they needed more food to sustain their population. Also, like I said, without agriculture we wouldn't be were we are now, but in the past, with a primitive agriculture, farming wasn't as reliable (especially in the short run) and the choice wasn't so clear-cut as many think. Hunter/gatherers also had much more spare time than farmers, but also didn't need that many extra tools in their society, so didn't need to concentrate on other things.
Of course you are right! But not entirely. Actually the early farmers for the first millennia were in pretty bad shape. The remains of these early farmers show a lot signs of malnutrition and especially unbalanced/low quality nutrition lacking proteins and vitamins. The hunters and gatherers were in a way better shape for all the generations before farming and especially their teeth and bones were stronger and healthier. That eventually changed with refined methods of farming and especially new crops. And it makes sense! The first farmers only had really bad plants to cultivate. All starchy corns we have today (including rice, corn, and broomcorn) were bred out of ordinary grass like plants. Also every kale, beet and cucumber like plant (melon, pumpkin) and others were not available. Apples were there but way smaller and only from Kazakhstan to Caucasus region. There were no citrus plants outside of east Asia and they were tiny and not edible. Later Asia had rice, Europe had wheat like stuff, and the Americas potatoes and corn. No one had all but you need more than one to have a decent baseline for nutrition. Especially potatoes did a miracle to Europe since they yield so much more on the same land and contain a ton of vitamins and minerals compared to really poor wheat products. The balance only shifted to a mostly balanced nutrition for the masses with globalization of cultural plants, trade with corn-like products between continents for the calories intake, mass cultivation of fruits that yield from late spring with strawberries to early summer with cherries and gooseberry (etcetera) to plums and pears for late summer and grapes and apples all over fall to December (winter apples - could be stored until spring) for extra vitamins and healthy ingredients, and finally the dedicated and planned usage of fertilizer ranging from just manure to guano (it was a huge increase for precious cultivation like citrus when guano was discovered and exported all over the world) and especially when artificial fertilizer was invented. And that only really started to kick in in the 19th century. Before that time famines or phases of awful monotone nutrition were the USUAL for any agricultural society. With only two years of bad harvests (to much or less rain, hail storms and especially early or late frost) in a row famines occurred. One bad harvest alone caused lacking nutrition. For what is now the first world famines were only finally solved by introduction of early machinery that increased the yields per farmer extremely, continent wide interconnect rails to transport food to areas with bad yields or food that can't be grown there in great masses for extremely low costs, centralized organized wheat and corn storages, cooled (below 0°C) transport ships that allowed to bring in raw meat from other continents and transport fruits like bananas and pineapples for reasonable costs, ice factories for allowing individuals to store food longer and inventions like conserved cans possible by inventions like pasteurization. And all that only happened in the first years of the 20th (!) century. Before that poor rural population often (but not always - North America is fertile and vast enough to support a fed and well off population from the 18th century) had a lower quantity and quality nutrition their predecessors 20.000 years in the same area had. Sorry for the wall of text. I just like this topic and are genuinely interested in it.
At this later age in my life, I finally said that's it! How the heck do you do all this with 1&0 ? I'm happy to say I've actually learned something. A counting system, and 1&0 denotes a high or low voltage that processors can read and translate into # & letters. Now what they heck did I just say? 😄
I started working in a TV repair shop in 1970 at age 16. The TVs then had tubes and were starting to get semiconductors. I just retired from doing satellite, microwave and fiber optic communications
I remember when this video when it was uploaded and I watched it with fascination, I was a senior in high school then. Now I've just graduated with dual degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering, have a very in depth understanding of the topic, and I'm starting a job in the semiconductor industry. It's crazy how things can change, if anyone is interested in this topic I highly recommend going to school for it, it has changed my life.
***** No, if you knew anything about the Fallout universe, there's a thing called "The Great Divergence" which basically separates our universe from the Fallout one. The Fallout universe isn't just post-apocalyptic; There's a pre-war era. I also didn't say that the lack of transistors is what caused the apocalypse.
***** calm down from disproving your point? I didn't mean to come off as defensive, I was just giving you the opportunity to understand why you're wrong.
While math is great you have to think engineers and physicists as well as they not only use mathematics but they use their imagination and theories to create a better world. A big shoutout to all scientists as well
@@ABEL-cd2sp IMO Language is the real MVP. Allowing us to communicate abstract ideas and develop mathematics, sciences, and engineering. Even more importantly it helped us organize complex social structures. I think the only inventions which can compete are fire (mainly b/c of cooking) and the invention of farming during the neolithic revolution.
@SinistaN physics is just a tool as well, chemistry is just a tool, biology is just a tool, science is simply just a tool. But which one is the one tool to rule them all?
Great video. The Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT - NPN/PNP) is not really the one used in CPU's. Unipolar CMOS MOSFETS are the star of the show. But all the info here is more than enough to get the gist of this tech! Loved it!
4:43 A key thing happening here, as with the triode vacuum tube, is _amplification_ : a small-amplitude signal can be used to control the amplitude of a much larger voltage or current, producing a stronger version of the same signal (barring well-known limitations like noise and distortion).
I grew up in a rural village in China, and this is the first time I get to know how my computer works. Huge thanks to you for sharing this incredibly useful knowledge. People are learning from every corner of the world from you.
Correction. The worlds first programmable electronic computer was 'Colossus'. The invention of British telephone engineer Tommy Flowers in 1943 and used at Bletchley Park, England from 1944 to break Axis military codes. The existence of Colossus was kept classified until the 1980's
And to think, all this wonderful science gave us social media and took us back to the dark ages lol! Everyone now lives in their own little bubble and we believe that our way of looking at it is certainly the right way, and everything else is fake news. We believe what we wish was true, and we find our little, or big as the case may be, group of people that we gather with online that agrees with us to bolster what we choose to believe whether true or not. And the worst part, politicians and some religious leaders have so imbedded the "us or them" mentality in us via the media to the point that we no longer can get along. Having said all that, I love the internet! What a source of knowledge for learning how to do things. UA-cam University. I use it all the time, and I'm 78. But yes, the transistor is up there with fire, dogs, horses, writing and the printing press! I could probably name a couple more, but you get the point.
I heard the inventor of the transistor was trying to figure out what to call it. He was waiting for a train one day when he heard one nun say to a few other nuns: "To the train, sisters!"
Now see I had always heard the inventor had hit a mental road block so he went on a 3 day bender with a bunch of coke and whiskey, where he and his bud ran a train on a transgender nun. After the wild weekend getaway he never could stop thinking of that hot trans sister.
Thank the employees of Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas in the 1960's & 70's for their innovation which made transistors useful for us today, for without them we would not be able to watch this video.
The shovel. It was a groundbreaking invention
The TACTICAL shovel, goddammit.
Why can't you heathens wrap your mind around this simple concept? TACTICAL shovels are the ultimate invention.
Ironic
What about the pickaxe?
@@guilhermecaiado5384 pickaxe ain't tactical.
ua-cam.com/video/bBRql-LF2vM/v-deo.html
Now I know how my dog feels when I'm talking to it.
You win the internet today!
Master, MASTER! Your talking too quick, do you want me to sit, or fetch that fucking stick?!
I know it's a joke but you just need high school Science to understand this video
Blah blah blah joe Blah blah
Bro. XD
Real engineering, I don't know if you're going to read this but PLEASE keep making videos. You are one of the few channels that actually explains things without simplifying it to the point that it's incorrect.
Fresh Tall-Walker I read everything! This is my obsession. I ain't stopping anytime soon
Real Engineering
You are seriously a great youtuber, and unlike some others, your accent isn't so heavy that its hard to understand. You simplify things well, and your explanations make sense.
Except that in this case he is incorrect as he explained bipolar transistors and they are not used in processors or FPGAs any more. CMOS or NMOS has been the route most companies have been going down for decades. The first commercial transistors used gallium not silicon and the Field Effect Transistor has been around at least in the lab since 1925 and patented in 1926.
It's also total bullshit, but w/e lol
I just upvoted so that you have 666 upvotes :)
The fact that a chunk of silicon has changed our lives in such a way is mind boggling
Those pieces of silicon are the most complex objects ever made by mankind. Your modern CPU has tens of billions of transistors packed into a few square centimeters, each capable of switching on and off billions of times a second. The process of making them can only be described as black magic.
Actually, the first transistors were germanium, not silicon. And other materials have been tried as well, e.g. gallium arsenide.
Also note that the “doping” process uses such tiny traces of the additional elements to make such a big change to its electrical properties, the substrate would still for many purposes be considered “chemically pure”.
and this invention leads to the development of Twitter causing the downfall of Humanity
It changed the life of Kardarshians too😂
i think its more fascinating how someone figured it all out.
Humans complaining that electrons are too big
I love this world
And too slow.
This was an awesome comment that hurts to realized it’s truth
Just smash the right amount of atoms on top of one another?
lol
Photons are just the way of the future, get over it old man!
The transistor described here is the junction transistor. But the device used in most digital ICs is the field-effect transistor, which operates more like a vacuum tube.
To be precise a MOSFET (as opposed to the JFET), where MOS stands for Metal Oxide Semiconductor, and FET for Field Effect Transistor.
They are all based on the same principles, some are current controlled and some are voltage controlled, some has current gain, some have voltage gain. The junction transistor led to not just FETs, but also BJTs and numerous other structures. The current silicon based transistors are a modification of the MOSFET, called a FinFET (invented at UC Berkeley) which itself has been modified.
It's akin due to extremely high impedance of low signal of low noise amplification being somewhat isolated from intended circuit.
@stevenvanhulle7242 The Mosfet is a brute but esd's can destroy it in a heart beat. I've repaired many car audio amplifiers and too many to recall a number of such. But I do recall one customer saying he and a friend was listening to his booming stereo system playing Blackmores rainbow and there was a lightning strike very close by and stereo stopped working from that point. I replaced all mosfets and fast rectifiers in power supply circuits in both Coustic brand amps that he used.
@@henrylee8510the FET has a completely different design, i dont feel like they are that related
I had a physics class taught by Dr. Brattain at Whitman College in the 1970s. I was having trouble with calculus and he took the time to show me and made it seem so simple that I was able grasp it. . I have always been grateful to him for that.
What did you get a degree in
@@Coolgiy67 probably engineering
@@mwanikimwaniki6801 I’m currently getting a electrical engineering degree
@@Coolgiy67 I'm currently pursuing Mechatronic engineering. It so happens that transistors are part of what I'm doing this sem.
@@mwanikimwaniki6801 mechatronics wow are you going to school in America?
When you think about how complex human machines are, you'll realize that humans in general are mad geniuses!
Wait until you understand the complexity of a single human cell or even the RNA!
Human brain is far more complicated than the understanding it gained about the human brain!!
Barely scratched the surface!!
@@igo_twikesYou sound like someone who believes in god
@@NiceEyeballs what do you mean
@@NiceEyeballsWell, God is real🤷 Jesus is Lord.
@@calicoesblue4703 God is real but is not a man
I didn’t know anything about transistors before watching this video and somehow I know even less.
oh man you've made my day lol
Best comment ,😂
Understand, but I felt better after watching the smilar video on SC :)
Age about 12, in about 1967, we learned about both the chemistry and the mathematics behind this. Transistor radios had become commonplace so we all knew about the concept. Has education gone backwards since then or were you not paying attention? I'm only slightly above average IQ, certainly no brain box
@@cuebj we just became more lazy...
1904: 4-inch vacuum tubes invented
2016: shit we've ran out of nano-scopic space, better use quantum effects of nature
We still have about 4-5 years left.
Imagine where we'll be in another 112 years.
Alex: in caves
Alex: Wondering what's behind that 10,000 foot tall wall we built in 2017
Slightly tan walkers?
Warning : without any basic knowledge of how semiconductors work, this video might be difficult to understand.
semiwhat?
KaninchenGaming -inactive- lmao
@@kaninchengaming-inactive-6529 ur semimom.
@@kaninchengaming-inactive-6529 semiwhatwhat?
I've only known about semiconductors for a week now through an introductory computer hardware course and some google searches on CPUs. I understood this video. I probably wouldn't have 8 days ago though 😄
The line about running into the issue of quantum tunneling when trying to make transistors smaller blew my mind and really put into perspective how truly small they are. Like quantum physics, a form of physics that is so unlike classical physics, the thing people watch videos on and will most likely never even think to actually encounter, is becoming a hard barrier for computer chips, something we use every day… woah..
Quantum tunnelling is itself integral to how transistors (and vacuum tubes) work in the first place.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104why is this? 😅 just curious
I'm 55 and started in analog. I was in tech college at 17 and designed and built my first phono preamp at 16. This is the best description of transistors and electrons and holes I've seen. Great job.
I would also say that fire was always there, we just learned how to harness its power. The transistor is something we created. I think that is significant.
Zanzubaa1.that's debateable depending on one's worldview, but i more or less agree with you.
Zanzubaa1 electricity was always there to, we harnessed it
true, but the transistor is a pretty novel concept
All technology is the result of identifying and harnessing natural phenomena. We didn't invent fire, we just learned how to control it. Same for electricity, and same for transistors, we didn't invent the semi conductor effect, it has always existed, we just noticed it and then learned how to control it for our purposes.
Fire (light And heat) was the first time we harnessed the electromagnetic force as light and heat are on the spectrum of electromagnetism.
I fell like you skipped how you turn transistors into logic gates which was a kinda key part of the simple-to-complex story you told. Thanks for the video though.
the two simplest ones are the and and or gates. for an "and" gate, imagine two switches in a row, both need to be on for the circuit to be complete giving a value of 1. If one of them is off, there is no current, and the value is 0. For an "or" gate, it's two switches in parallel. As long as one (or both) is on, the circuit is again complete. other gates get more complicated, but that should give you a basic idea. Hope it helps!
there's a stupidly good video on the subject NumberPhile. The wiring of an and gate in NPN is pretty interesting.
do you need help you said you fell, are you hurt?
XOR (eXclusive OR) is like a pair of light switches for one room - Either switch On = Light On. Both switches On ~OR~ Off = Light Off.
That is: 00 = 0, 01 = 1, 10 = 1, 11 = 0.
I understand what you're saying but as someone with a degree in Electrical Engineering I found it easy enough to follow. Obviously it goes without saying that's because I already know how that step works. But honestly, the way he describes how the electrons move and how the transistor works I felt like I had an epiphany or something. I never once had it click like that for me and all of a sudden those first semesters of class make more sense
I watched the video 3 years ago in covid lockdown when I was in 9th grade. I didn't understand it properly. Today after 3 years I watched this video again to know how transistors worked and it was so easy to understand . To all the folks who watched the video but did not understand a thing, keep hustling and it will be fine
my brain hurts i need more ram
My BRAIN TREMBLES!!
come on it is like a fucking mechanical stwich or relay only that's electronic and switched thousands millions times per second with a hyper fast finger, a quarz reloj pulse.
Ok, fairies and magic smoke, I get it now
thatonebeone hahahaha same here
I see what you did there
Real Engineering: transistors are simple, let me explain.
Me: brain starts melting 15 seconds later.
To be fair, this video assumes you already have some knowledge of how electronics works, so for someone already familiar with this kind of thing it is simple. For the rest of us.....not so much.
If you understand basic electrical components and how electrical circuits work, it is fairly simple. It's essentially a switch controlled by current.
at least its not a MOSFET
It's a switch
@@TheMidnightillusion if they have electronic concepts,they know transistor
1's and 0's you see in videos and pictures are made out of more 1's and 0's.
It's ones and zeros all the way down...
Mind=Blown
Binaryception?
illuminati Confirmed
Yo dawg, I heard u leik ones and zeroes...
THANK YOU SO MUCH, you've successfully answered all my questions that were bothering me for my whole life in 8 minutes!!!!!
i relate to this
I can relate😂
I can relate bru
3:55 n-types are not negatively charged as they still contain the same number of electrons and protons. The n in the name simply refers to the valence electrons that can move inside the crystal structure
Yeah I caught that too; what a Bafoon!🤓
N-type silicon (donor doped, with a group 5 element) have an extra (donor) electron in their lattice, this makes them net negative. P-type silicon (acceptor doped, with a group 3 element) have a missing electron (acceptor) in their lattice which is represented as a moving “hole” with a positive charge, this makes them net positive.
Good catch.
I've never stopped to think about this, but it makes total sense
@@richardramos5124 No it doesn't make them net-negative or net-positive. Remember if I dope the wafer with let's assume Phosphorous, it will give 1 extra electron to lattice but it will still carry the same positive charge in it's nucleus.
This is awesome! I just learned this in my physics 2 class and observing this video and understanding how electric charges can be manipulated so easily is incredibly eye opening. The universe itself is like an electric circuit…I truly wish we could observe the movement of charged particles with our naked eye! Thank you for this channel!
Yes you're very fortunate to live in these times. When I studied Electrical Engineering in the 80's there wasn't any computers or video tu
@@crod6431 nowadays electrical engineering and computer engineering are a joint degree. I'm planning on taking a masters in electrical & computer engineering after my BC in physics.
@@Caaro99 wishing u good luck
you can view them. thats what a flame is. or lightening.
@@crod6431 lol you did coding on paper
3:55 N-Type and P-Type are actually not negatively or positively charged respectively, since the impurities used for the doping (typically phosphorous and Boron), along with the extra or missing electron also bring an extra or missing proton resulting on a still neutral alloy.
N-Type means that the element used to improve the conductivity is the electron while P-Type uses "holes" or the space left behind by electrons while moving across the semiconductor.
Nice video though, +1
Yeah but commonly in electronics semiconductors get assigned positive and negative notations regardless, and the material with extra electrons gets called positive for the sake of keeping it within the bounds of naming conventions, not necessarily because it is charged.
The fact that something made from sand runs the whole modern world is simply marvelous
Isn't it ironic how your phone is made of silicone a product of sand which is product of sand rock. The Bible states that when man refuses to praise God the trees and rocks will begin praising him.
What's more marvelous is how most people don't seem to be able comprehend just how marvelous this is.
@@DavidA.Johnson "silicone" 🤡
OMG
I thought that transistor was a triple-barreled artillery piece on a navy ship in the thumbnail.
You're not alone
Same here.
Those naval guns did change the world tho
A transistor is a woman who becomes a man
same. too much World of Warships. :(
Hi, can you do quantum computing next? Cause that stuff's making my head spin.
like an up spin or a down spin?
Pun intended?
frame of essence made a very good video on that ("you dont know how a quantum computer works")
Please tell me you purposely made that pun!
+laxpors that's the name of the video XD
I'm an electrical sub-engineer. I studied all of these in detail for 3 years. I still don't fully understand it. 🤣🤣
Lol U dumb
asdfg yxcv how rude lmao
@@test-qz4dq Yeah
@Jr Engineers I'm thinking about trying one
That's the state of Indian education system.
The secret that most of us know and dont say is it isn't THE it is ONE OF THE. There is a chain, fire gave us warmth and better food which allowed our brains to grow better. The Levers, The Wheel, The Printing Press. Actually James Burke did a series a long time ago that covered this well. Great video, Cant wait to see more!
exactly, it is a series of discoveries & inventions
You’re right, that was an amazing series from BBC. Cleverly, and interestingly written, shot and edited.
To me the printing press is number 1.
This is one of the BEST explanations of how computers work. Everyone just does conceptual stuff like graphically representing logic gates and droning on about binary without touching on what a transistor is or what it looks like and how it's made and what it's made of. Nice job showing what's really going on. Now could you walk through how programming hello world or something like that actually translates through a modern computer all the way down to the hardware itself?
Except logic gates use FET's not Bipolar transistors these days and have done for decades.
interesting. Any other advances we should know about?
Depends on the area of electronics you are working in. Germanium transistors (bipolar) are being further researched in labs for ultra low noise applications, Gallium Arsenide for MMIC high frequency circuits, silicon carbide for high temperature semiconductors, and I am personally looking at valve triodes for some applications where semiconductors have too many disadvantages. I personally have a stock of OA95 diodes (about 150) because you just cannot get a silicon equivalent. Solid core memory is preferable to modern semiconductor memory in a very few applications, and the only two technologies I believe to be truly obsolete are Integrated Injection Logic (see TI TMS 9900 from early 80;s) and loop memory and I could be wrong on the second.
Electrons are conceptual stuff out of the imagination. They don't exist. Think Ether fields and lines of force instead.
Free Diugh I like these bits of hardware, it’s my little obsession and my school only has programming.
I already knew most of the information in the video. Despite this, you avoided dumbing-down any of the information in the video, while having much better diagrams than any of the places that I learnt this stuff from. Congrats on a video well made
yeah I was a bit iffy with making this video, since there are so many on the subject already. I put a stupid amount of effort into the animations, in the hopes that would make it the best video on the subject.
I agree, you did a great job with this.
Probably you achieved that! Fantastic explanation, as always! However, I wish this video came 1 year earlier :D
This helped me a lot , as a construction engineer i know a thing or two about physics , but this was the first time i understood how vacuum tubes work (because of the animation). THANK YOU!
I call bullshit on this
My teacher couldn't explain to me how the semi-conductor works. He kept talking about "donors" and "holes" but I didn't understand a thing. Few years later it all makes sense :D
3:58 ptype is not positively charged... both ptype and ntype are neutral
@@keppa3635 While there is no "Charge" that naturally exists in either of the doped materials, atom-for-atom there are more electrons in the N-type material (and fewer in the P-type material) than in pure silicon.
@@dalexplym4882 But that's not what positive/negative charge is. A material is positively charged if it has more protons than electrons. In both P-type and N-type material, they have/lack an extra electron but the electron/proton balance is still 0 meaning both types are neutral in charge.
@@sk8erJG95 how does it stay 0 when you add or remove an electron? Wouldn't that tip the scale to one side or the other?
This is such a good video. You've no idea how many "what are semiconfuctors/transistors" videos I've watched and not quite gotten it, but this was the one that got me to understand.
the n type and p type are not actually negative, they are both neutral, but their prefixes refer to the type of charges that move around. For the n type, there is an extra electron than there would be if there were all silicon atoms, however since the phosphorus has a neutral valence shell of 5, it remains neutral. This electron can them move around making other silicon atoms negative and phosphorus positive but the total charge remains neutral. in the p type all the other electrons move around and it seems as though the positive charge is moving.
Excatly
Awesome illustation for an Electrical Engineer like me (I barely remembered this stuff after 5 years of working in different field). I would recommend to open up explanations more and a bit of more time to comprehend to let others benefit from your great content.
5:43 Im learning that at college right now and now I understand thanks you. My teacher explained it differently I had difficulty understanding lol.
basically every single college teacher ever
some teachers are definitely better than others, thats a great shame for some growing minds
compute.
a mild correction: n-type semiconductor aren't negatively charged. Similarly p-type semiconductors aren't positively charged either, both of them are neutral. The initials just represent the type of charge which is conducted when applied a voltage on the crystal. That implies in the case of n-types the charge that's being conducted is electron(-ve), and In the case of p-types their is no actual long distance conduction of electron, it's the absence of electron which can can be taken as a movement of positive charge, but overall the crystal is neutral.
P.S : still an amazing video, love your content.
Me : replay this video for 10 min still understand nothing
*crying in 1 and 0*
Don't feel bad. The narrator assumes you have mastered 1st year physics, chemistry, and electronics. This is therefore more a building upon that foundation.
Only your left eye is crying?
sad=1;
Without transistors, Vsauce wouldn't exist
I understood better than my professors explained.
Maybe the video helped, but also the explanations are quite clear.
Maybe your mind is not too into "mathematics". Maybe you're an artist. (no joke, no disrespect here)
Real engineering: "as you can see this will give us the number eleven"
Me: ... ... ... ... (processing)... ... ... ... ERROR ERROR (resetting)
0 + 0 = 1
1 + 1 = 0
0 + 1 = 1
1 + 0 = 1
That's how I understand it
@@esotericmelody9718 NOR?
Nah don't worry about it. He didn't explain it properly, it was very rushed.
@@esotericmelody9718 I didn't understand the "Carry" part , cos AND gives 1 when both are 1 and 0 when both are 0, so AND should give 1+1 = 1 while XOR would give 1+1 = 0 ( I'm talking abt the second box in the 4-bit 11 binary code) , so 1 from AND and 0 from XOR should give 1 in 2nd box, I dont understand how the 1 carries forward to the 1st box. Please explain this
Also, i m addressing the boxes from left to right...
Me learning to become an auto tech: Negative signals gives us zero and positive gives us one!
Engineer: Yeah that works in cars, but this is actually how this works.
Me: Uh... ok, I think.
Brilliant lecture and visuals. Thank you!
A checkmark with only 13 likes? Watch this skyrocket.
fire wasn't a invention, it was a discovery
Inventions are just that. Otherwise, one would be creating things that dont exist. and thats impossible
@@ShayPatrickCormacTHEHUNTERwell no, they are referring to the fact fire is a natural occurrence, it has existed long before us and will continue to without us, vacuum tubes are not a natural occuring object
@@sebastianfischer2082 The fact that elements can be rearranged into a vacuum tube, means not that vacuum tubes were created (invented). Rather that we discovered how to rearrange existing matter to make a vacuum tube. Everything is a discovery.
@@ShayPatrickCormacTHEHUNTER seems more you're trying to sound insightful without really having a point, it didn't work out bud
@@sebastianfischer2082 there's simpler ways to say you don't understand the point.
Carbon nanotubes are being researched as a replacement for silicon to make transistors even smaller. Thanks for the great video.
They're much better at dissipating heat too, so they can be run faster, and are more conductive than silicon, so they can be run with less power.
But far more expensive
For now :P
Carbon nanotubes have been said to be replacements for years, but sadly their price cannot justify any consumer use anytime soon
***** Yeah but for now its far too expensive. We have been waiting for carbon nanotube breakthroughs for 25 years but it proves to be just another expensive technology far ahead of its time. Its awesome and all, that we have carbon nanotube technology but I think its worth it for us to put our efforts into other technology that could help in CPU development as well as Carbon nanotube transistors
I'm working for ASML as a mechanical design engineer on the latest generation of IC lithography machines. And we're very much struggling to get to 13.5 nm, so the current FET designs are still applicable for more than 5 years.
Any updates considering whole situation with ASML now?
@@ketanpatil935 EUV is now fully up and running, they're now looking into expanding towards high NA machines.
Most development now goes into reliability related stuff.
Great video! Additionally, thermal challenges caused by the decreasing size, increasing density, power consumption and inadequate cooling techniques (mainly convection with air, and watercooling more recently) are also causing the decline in performance improvements with each iteration. Splitting the cpu’s into different cores managed to increase computing power further, but the performance on a single core basis hasn’t really improved that much since around 05/06 :)
I'm not sure if you know what you did here, but in this video you explained in 8 minutes, the literal foundation of what makes the world turn, in a way that I literally don't have any questions. It's astonishing, I've been bashing my head with this question for months, and you just sat down, and explained it in 8 minutes.
I feel so thankful for this video.
incredible video!
Gordon E. Moore's law : cost of manufacturing microchips will continue to increase.....
AMD : I'm bout to end this man's whole carrier
Yunaz... 😂😂😂
Lmao
Except that cheaper AMD processors can't compare to Intel in power, and the ones that do are comparable to Intel in price. There really is no difference.
@@imaginarystranger1974 Really? A 22C/44T 2.2GHz Xeon processor (E5-2699) Costs $4115 USD, in comparison, a 32C/64T 3.5GHz Threadripper processor (TR3970X) costs $1900 USD, so at less than half the price, it has a 1.3 GHz higher base clock (I'll ignore boost clock for this) and 10 more cores, there is a difference.
@@imaginarystranger1974 man sales say it all , AMD is cheaper , consumes lesser power, providers much better performance, "yes even in single threaded applications " and this is just Zen2 aka Ryzen 3000 , zen3 will be more of this!
Kinda hard to say fire literally allowed us to evolve to what we are and then say transistors are more important right after that lol.
Transistors still needs fire to be produced, am i right?
I would argue that fire is not an invention per se, it's only a discovery. Transistors are indeed an invention, so if we're talking about an invention that changed the world, it would be transistors and not fire.
@@lodestarsd4456 you're right
@@lodestarsd4456 the wheel. The lever.
That was very informative. Probably the first time in 50 years someone has broken down the fundamentals of how transistors make a computer work. The demonstration of the half adder was very helpful.
Excellent introduction!
A couple minor nitpicks (from a long-time EE):
- N-type silicon is not negatively charged; it just has an excess of electrons not bound into the crystalline lattice. They are therefore very easy to disassociate from their atomic nuclei to conduct electricity.
- NPN transistors are not really particularly common nowadays. By far the most common are MOSFETs, which by the way, behave even more like vacuum tubes. They are, essentially, voltage-controlled resistors: the “channel” through which current conducts, is all one type of Silicon, and is intrinsically an insulator. However, the third “gate” terminal can pull carriers (electrons or “holes”) into the channel making it much more conductive - “turning it on,” so to speak.
Nevertheless, great video!
You mention Gordon Moore but totally neglect to credit the person responsible for developing the first transistor William Shockley. Without William Shockley silicon valley wouldn't be what it is today.
And yet his two boys, Bardeen and Brittain, demonstrated the "Crystadyne" to the Bell Lab honchos when William was away on vacation. He was furious when he found out. So the device was not patentable but the theory as to why it worked was. And the rest is history...
"As a co-inventor of the transistor, William Shockley brought silicon to Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, he was also an unrepentant racist.
He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. But in later years, despite a complete lack of formal education in biology and genetics, Shockley tried to use these fields of study to support a set of racist ideas known as eugenics.
In particular, he warned of “retrogressive evolution” because he believed blacks were reproducing faster than what he considered to be intellectually superior whites. His proposed “solutions” included replacing the welfare system with financial incentives for “genetically disadvantaged” individuals to allow themselves to be sterilized." - National Geographic news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151005-nobel-laureates-forget-racist-sexist-science/
@@RageIt And everything he predicted is happening today. Nobody ever really debated him, they just booed and screamed and physically attacked him when he spoke. And, of course, everybody claiming that he was wrong and that genetics has nothing to do with intelligence also have a "complete lack of formal education in biology and genetics," but you don't mind someone's lack of formal education in a field as long as they agree with you, huh?
@@bc2578 What all did he predict that is happening today and what were his reasons?
@@pbjbagel Dysgenics. The useless takers outbreeding the useful producers and the catastrophic misery it will end in. The stupid breeding with the stupid to create endless generations of unemployable incapables full of resentment and rage at their betters.
I've always thought of myself as a reasonably intelligent person, after watching this I realize that I was wrong.
there's smart and then there's a whole other level of smart im very thankful for truly Intelligent people throughout modern history we've come a very long way in the past hundred years with technology but i could never create a CPU or microscopic transistor but im stoked that people do
You go to the beach and get some sand. Melt that sand and rapidly cool it to form a crystaline silicone structure. Remove the crystaline segments onto a new container - repeat a few times untill the silicon percentage is near max. Next, add your choice of cation or anion atom in a 1 to 10 ratio to your silicon (add more to increase conductivity). Repeat everything to form new (usually 3) varying conductivity layers and ion boundaries. Make sure the surrounding material enclosing the silicon is non-conductive. Finally, add a copper trail leading to the silicone mixture from a power source. The electrons will move from the cathode to the anode towards the silicon's electron deprived layer, but only if the middle layer has a low electron potential energy (electron deficient) if it's being supplied by voltage by a different circuit (rich in electrons) it won't allow the original circuit to form (this part was explained in the vid).
@@TrainerFromUnova xD it is hard enough making glass from sand let alone this.
Give yourself a break. When I went through electrical engineering, there were a lot of classes with a lot of detail material to build up to transistor theory and application. Short answer: he left a lot out of his explanation. If he didn't his video would be unbearably long.
@@charlessmith6412 Haha, I also went through EE. Many people in the comments don't realize how much there is to learn about these things, the fact that it's not always going to be fun and the amount of discipline needed.
I don't think the NPN transistor is not the most prevalent transistor in the world. Computers are using MOSFET transistors which are constructed a little differently.
an n-channel mosfet is basically an npn transistor so..
All transistors are NPN. MOSFET is just a more complex form of it.
Well, in the end all semiconductor structures are made up of n-type and p-type material next to each other. But the working principle of a bipolar transistor and a FET are very different. A BJT is a current controlled switch, a FET is a voltage controlled switch.
+Sousuke Aizen Do you know anything about transistors?
Sousuke Aizen wtf are you talking about
I was watching a video for beginners, on how to build a basic circuit on a bread board. I got lost understanding the different gates and combinations... Your vid has freed me from that confusion and while I still don't fully understand what I'm learning, I'm no longer stuck. Thank you so much.
Amazing. Im currently studying to become an electronics engineer. This video summarizes my second year semester course topics.
Please never stop making videos. I learn a lot of stuff that I always wondered on this amazing channel! :)
I wish I could learn like I could when I was a kid. I just realized this is sponsored by The Great Courses. I have their course on electronics and I've watched the DVD lectures on transistors at least 20 times, it's really fantastic, but it's so hard for me to learn complex things at 40. 3:59 mentions doping, and the TGC lesson spends the time to clearly explain that term, and many other things.
I learned how to rebuild my weedwhacker recently and it was easy to learn and remember. This shit, I can understand, but it's way over my head. Obviously I'm here because I'm still trying to learn anyway.
I've rewatched from 3:40 several times now, and it's using simplicity to tie together the more complex TGC lesson on this and I'm finally getting it.
Try supplementing with creatine (start on a low amount until your guts get used to it, and drink plenty of water) and ginkgo biloba. Both are clinically proven to do wonders for your memory.
If you’re a fan of the Fallout universe you should know that the difference that split their world from hours is the fact that the transistor is never invented in their world. Causing humanity to advance towards robotics and nuclear based machines instead of computers. That’s why everything is so futuristic while at the same time TV’s and computers look like they’re from the 50’s.
It’s fiction but it’s fun to speculate that that could have been a viable alternate reality.
Good thing i took some IT course, otherwise i would not understand what he said.
People if you don't know what he is talking about then watch crashcourse computer science.
Great video! But I think you forgot to mention exactly why you think the transistor did more for the human kind than the invention of fire? For the record I completely agree. Computers have done so incredibly much for us within the lifetime of most of us today, and we've barely scratched the surface of what we can do with it.
Didn't mind the lack of music btw. Didn't even notice until you pointed it out.
Wasn't aiming to argue which is best. There is no one invention that I could identify as best, each branch of the technology tree is important. I just wanted to draw a comparison between fires impact on our society and the transistor. They both had huge impacts on the evolution of our culture and societies.
I don't especially disagree. There is no way to quantify what invention did the most, and any opinion is equally correct (or equally incorrect for that matter). And like you said, each important invention is required for us to get to the next one, somewhat like the tech tree in the Civilization games.
However I'm still going to claim the transistor is bigger. Yes, it requires electricity, which required industry, which required melting and forging, which required fire (more or less), but while all those have greatly impacted our society, the transistor is changing our society from noticeably in only a couple of decades to the point of not being recognizable for anyone who hasn't lived it. And we've only scratched the surface of what it can do. While all of the previous mentioned technologies are required to make it, the transistor is the end product (or descendant of, if we start using something that, say, takes 3 states instead of only 2). It's going to change in many ways, but the the idea of a computer storing numbers isn't going to go away in any foreseeable future.
Or maybe I'm just a dumb person who's can't see past the present because I'm living in it. My forefathers might have thought the exact same thing as me about anything important in their life.
I would have argue that the steam engine was a greater invention as it was the first time that man could harness power without being constraint by a location (like windmill and watermill where) or an animal. For the same reason some would argue that wind and water mill are important too because it was the first time that we harness the force of nature to work for us.
But yes, the transistor is definitely up there in the great invention of mankind. The question is more to know if it will stay as a milestone or just a step replaced by an even more important successor like the vacuum tube was replaced by the transistor.
I would say that the most important developments in history are probably agriculture, vaccines and sanitation.
The answer's very simple. Soap has done more for human well-being than anything else.
1:07 gotta love that 2013-2015ish MacBook running windows which isn't even properly cropped in
Lol
8 mins and 11 seconds in one breath. That must be a world record
Silicon Valley = Southern Bay Area
Silicone Valley = Los Angeles
damn😁😁😁
how to differentiate the pronounciation ? 😰
aina zain con vs cone
oh shet
One trying to get smaller, the other trying to get bigger.
1983: computers
2017: fidget spinners
2018: nothing
2017: Fortnite
2016 - But Can It Run Crysis? rofl
Mykul22 👍🏻😂😂😂😂😂
lol
Ahh transistors. The one thing us mech eng students never understood how to calculate or use in electrical engineering lab.
I'm a Computer Engineer, got straight 10's in the Semiconductors class when I was an undergraduate, and I still scratch my head over this shit. You're not alone.
I'm studying electrical engineering atm, and I can tell you, transistors are easy. You only need to understand the basic concept once. Static CMOS logic design is the most straightforward, that is elementary school stuff.
Im studying computer sciences and I feel dumb on the transistor subject
Voltage between the base and the emitter controls the current between the collector and the emitter (there's close to zero current on the base). If you only change the base voltage by a few millivolts, it acts like a linear amplifier (voltage controlled current source). If you change it by the volts, it's basically a switch. Base on high voltage -> collector on low voltage (because collector-emitter acts like a short circuit); base on low voltage -> collector on high voltage (because collector-emitter acts like an infinite resistance) (assuming that the collector is connected to VCC through a resistor, and the emitter is connected to GND, which is almost always the case).
If you talk about BJTs they don't amplify voltage or control the current using the base voltage but they amplify the base current. The base current is actually fairly high. MOSFETS have near to 0 gate currents but then you were not talking about mosfets.
Dr. William Shockley, PhD ( Stanford University ); the father of the transistor. Developed in the late 1950's, early 1960's.
Very nice and informative video. Currently studying electrical engineering and it's an eyeopener to how everything around us works.
Technology has changed a lot from when I started working first with valves then transistors and onto integrated circuits. I recall early LCD and LED technology. Amazing times.
How I wish this was available when I was studying electrical engineering a decade ago. This simplifies a lot of things. Thank you very much!
Same here, i vividly remeber my solid state electronics course it took ages to digest and understand what this video summurized in few minutes
I'd say written language - that's what allowed us to pass on information to future generations even if we were to die young, meaning knowledge was never lost and we could always build on previous information.
20 years from now " how Quantum computing changed the world"
I cannot wait for that day and truly I’m excited for it, I wonder what kind of world we’ll be living in, what will computers look like? Will they be heavier or lighter? How did we use computing in different fields of research, manufacturing, engineering and what not.
All these possibilities and we are coming so close to it.
Man what a world we live in
Quantum computers wont replace classical computers though
♫♪Ludwig van Beethoven♪♫ I wouldn’t entirely count on that some people thought the computer wouldn’t replace the typewriter but here we are. Only time will tell, if costs and the space required to make them and use them goes down enough along with finding ways to create a good graphical interface for normal users then well, it will happen and it just might but I prefer to wait and see how tech develops in 20-30 years just always remember in 1969 we landed on the moon and 50 years later their computers can’t even compare to the shittiest phones in computing power.
Invest in quantum
25 years...
Awesome. I understood nothing
He did meander outside of his title.
😀😀 same
He is going 2 fucking fast
I feel you bro 🤣🤣🤣
hahaha me too
Thanks for the video. Congratulations. 😎👍
I just want to mention that the npn bipolar junction transistor (BJT) that you showin the video is mainly used in old logic families like TTL, today used in a few applications. The MOSFET, in which CMOS technology is based (present in almost all microelectronic devices today) has other structure and functions in a different way, maybe closer to the triode vacuum tube that you showed.
It's a great video capturing the important things taught through 3 years of electrical engineering study .
0:04 toilet paper
Bidets are infinitely better
@@RamyssouDNo
@@RamyssouDThat is what girlfrend is for
I think the most incredible invention of all time is agriculture. Imagine struggling to survive with barely enough to eat and somehow convincing yourself and others that instead of eating your food it would be a good idea to bury it in the ground.
mrbandishbhoir
Yes... because of agriculture...
Actually, if it wasn't for overpopulation and over-hunting, we would still be hunter/gatherers. And agriculture had a lot of downsides: the diet wasn't less varied, more time had to spend on work, especially in the beginning it was actually far less reliable for food gathering due to crop failures - the protection of the crops was very lacking after all: insects, sickness, weather... All could destroy your harvest and you would be starving.
Hunter/gatherers did certainly not struggle to survive. Anthropologists today argue that they knew damn well that plants grow when you bury seeds. If you look to hunter/gatherers today, they have more leisure time than we do, or the first farmers would've had. The transition towards agricultural society was also not very fast, but went very gradually. There were even native American hunter/gatherer tribes who grew tobacco but not a single other crop.
Of course, without agriculture we wouldn't have advanced as much as a society, but back then it wasn't as appealing as you seem to think.
mrbandishbhoir
Yeah, of course larger population were supported by the agricultural revolution. However, the reason the first farmers had to change from a hunter/gatherer society to an agricultural one was because of overpopulation. Overpopulation is exactly that: the land can't sustain the amount of people anymore based on a certain economic model or method of getting food. Hunter/gatherers made a slow transition towards agriculture because they needed more food to sustain their population.
Also, like I said, without agriculture we wouldn't be were we are now, but in the past, with a primitive agriculture, farming wasn't as reliable (especially in the short run) and the choice wasn't so clear-cut as many think. Hunter/gatherers also had much more spare time than farmers, but also didn't need that many extra tools in their society, so didn't need to concentrate on other things.
It isn't an invention its a discovery
Of course you are right! But not entirely. Actually the early farmers for the first millennia were in pretty bad shape. The remains of these early farmers show a lot signs of malnutrition and especially unbalanced/low quality nutrition lacking proteins and vitamins. The hunters and gatherers were in a way better shape for all the generations before farming and especially their teeth and bones were stronger and healthier. That eventually changed with refined methods of farming and especially new crops. And it makes sense! The first farmers only had really bad plants to cultivate. All starchy corns we have today (including rice, corn, and broomcorn) were bred out of ordinary grass like plants. Also every kale, beet and cucumber like plant (melon, pumpkin) and others were not available. Apples were there but way smaller and only from Kazakhstan to Caucasus region. There were no citrus plants outside of east Asia and they were tiny and not edible. Later Asia had rice, Europe had wheat like stuff, and the Americas potatoes and corn. No one had all but you need more than one to have a decent baseline for nutrition. Especially potatoes did a miracle to Europe since they yield so much more on the same land and contain a ton of vitamins and minerals compared to really poor wheat products. The balance only shifted to a mostly balanced nutrition for the masses with globalization of cultural plants, trade with corn-like products between continents for the calories intake, mass cultivation of fruits that yield from late spring with strawberries to early summer with cherries and gooseberry (etcetera) to plums and pears for late summer and grapes and apples all over fall to December (winter apples - could be stored until spring) for extra vitamins and healthy ingredients, and finally the dedicated and planned usage of fertilizer ranging from just manure to guano (it was a huge increase for precious cultivation like citrus when guano was discovered and exported all over the world) and especially when artificial fertilizer was invented. And that only really started to kick in in the 19th century. Before that time famines or phases of awful monotone nutrition were the USUAL for any agricultural society. With only two years of bad harvests (to much or less rain, hail storms and especially early or late frost) in a row famines occurred. One bad harvest alone caused lacking nutrition. For what is now the first world famines were only finally solved by introduction of early machinery that increased the yields per farmer extremely, continent wide interconnect rails to transport food to areas with bad yields or food that can't be grown there in great masses for extremely low costs, centralized organized wheat and corn storages, cooled (below 0°C) transport ships that allowed to bring in raw meat from other continents and transport fruits like bananas and pineapples for reasonable costs, ice factories for allowing individuals to store food longer and inventions like conserved cans possible by inventions like pasteurization. And all that only happened in the first years of the 20th (!) century. Before that poor rural population often (but not always - North America is fertile and vast enough to support a fed and well off population from the 18th century) had a lower quantity and quality nutrition their predecessors 20.000 years in the same area had.
Sorry for the wall of text. I just like this topic and are genuinely interested in it.
At this later age in my life, I finally said that's it! How the heck do you do all this with 1&0 ? I'm happy to say I've actually learned something.
A counting system, and 1&0 denotes a high or low voltage that processors can read and translate into # & letters.
Now what they heck did I just say? 😄
I started working in a TV repair shop in 1970 at age 16. The TVs then had tubes and were starting to get semiconductors. I just retired from doing satellite, microwave and fiber optic communications
Valerie Fridland has a great course on sociolinguistics you can get from the Great Courses. It's eye opening. Very good.
3:53 "This extra electron ( by doping pure silicon lattice with phosphorous atoms ) makes the n-type *negatively* charged ."
this hurts my ears
You learned something
This video convinced me to write my material science research paper on this topic. Great video and puts everything into perspective! Great job!
I remember when this video when it was uploaded and I watched it with fascination, I was a senior in high school then. Now I've just graduated with dual degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering, have a very in depth understanding of the topic, and I'm starting a job in the semiconductor industry. It's crazy how things can change, if anyone is interested in this topic I highly recommend going to school for it, it has changed my life.
Im in computer engineering right now! May I ask where you are working now?
@@initiisnovis9673 Sure! I work at a company called Wolfspeed, they specialize in SiC and GaN semiconductors.
w/o transistors = Fallout Universe.
Just FYI.
Yeah because the 19th century was a post apocalyptic wasteland.
***** No, if you knew anything about the Fallout universe, there's a thing called "The Great Divergence" which basically separates our universe from the Fallout one. The Fallout universe isn't just post-apocalyptic; There's a pre-war era. I also didn't say that the lack of transistors is what caused the apocalypse.
Mike Gus Fifteen wew calm down lad
***** calm down from disproving your point? I didn't mean to come off as defensive, I was just giving you the opportunity to understand why you're wrong.
Mike Gus Fifteen
You're getting very agitated over sth so trivial. Take a chill pill bub.
And without the mathematicians you would have only fire.
While math is great you have to think engineers and physicists as well as they not only use mathematics but they use their imagination and theories to create a better world.
A big shoutout to all scientists as well
@@ABEL-cd2sp IMO Language is the real MVP. Allowing us to communicate abstract ideas and develop mathematics, sciences, and engineering. Even more importantly it helped us organize complex social structures. I think the only inventions which can compete are fire (mainly b/c of cooking) and the invention of farming during the neolithic revolution.
@SinistaN physics is just a tool as well, chemistry is just a tool, biology is just a tool, science is simply just a tool.
But which one is the one tool to rule them all?
Sounds like it's time to start shooting mathematicians
I'm guessing you're a mathematician
How you explain this better than 4 engineering classes I took in college
Your mom gay
@@ViratKohli-jj3wj no u
Great video. The Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT - NPN/PNP) is not really the one used in CPU's. Unipolar CMOS MOSFETS are the star of the show. But all the info here is more than enough to get the gist of this tech! Loved it!
4:43 A key thing happening here, as with the triode vacuum tube, is _amplification_ : a small-amplitude signal can be used to control the amplitude of a much larger voltage or current, producing a stronger version of the same signal (barring well-known limitations like noise and distortion).
Truly incredible video. I feel like I barely, kind of, actually understand how computers work now!
1:13 nice video editing mate
Let me introduce you to my favourite irish slang. Narsed!
Not-arsed, not bothered with perfecting that kind of editing. Effort like
Holy shit you replied, hi man. dw I was just being a troll ;) good video though.
ah sure, I'm always watching like an ever vigilant fox. I know you were just messing
it's the batman of UA-cam!
Naw man, FOXMAN.
I grew up in a rural village in China, and this is the first time I get to know how my computer works. Huge thanks to you for sharing this incredibly useful knowledge. People are learning from every corner of the world from you.
The most important thing is electricity. Without that, transistor wouldnt exist.
is that an invention tho?
more like a discovery like fire
@Chief Beforechurch not really, fire was already very useful, they had to invent ways to use electricity for sure tho
Binary code is pure energy
@@satyampandey2222 fire is binary
@@superkb172 oh is that so? well i ain't sure of that
2:30 not to mention, in angry birds it takes milliseconds to calculate, not half an hour.
Micro second actually
@@JordyDevrixOfficialpico
Correction. The worlds first programmable electronic computer was 'Colossus'. The invention of British telephone engineer Tommy Flowers in 1943 and used at Bletchley Park, England from 1944 to break Axis military codes. The existence of Colossus was kept classified until the 1980's
You dont have to ride their dicks, it doesn't matter who did it
And to think, all this wonderful science gave us social media and took us back to the dark ages lol! Everyone now lives in their own little bubble and we believe that our way of looking at it is certainly the right way, and everything else is fake news. We believe what we wish was true, and we find our little, or big as the case may be, group of people that we gather with online that agrees with us to bolster what we choose to believe whether true or not. And the worst part, politicians and some religious leaders have so imbedded the "us or them" mentality in us via the media to the point that we no longer can get along. Having said all that, I love the internet! What a source of knowledge for learning how to do things. UA-cam University. I use it all the time, and I'm 78. But yes, the transistor is up there with fire, dogs, horses, writing and the printing press! I could probably name a couple more, but you get the point.
I'm in the smart side of youtube again.. back to laughing camels
care to share dem laughing camels?
:D
epic comment chicken , well played .. also nice comeback ..well done all around'
friedchicken one year later and I'm still waiting for the camel video
ua-cam.com/video/sZr3_Ac_nB4/v-deo.html
Lol that video editing at 1:14. Nice work :p
This is such a good video on the chemistry behind it, though it would be good if you explained the basic functioning first for newbies
Also, you should show how logic gates are constructed using transistors, this will give a much better understanding of the importance of transistors.
It's a good thing that you put that big arrow in the thumbnail. Most people would never have picked out the transistor image.
I just watched all your videos in a row, great job man. Keep on going!
Thanks. I'm not going anywhere!
I heard the inventor of the transistor was trying to figure out what to call it. He was waiting for a train one day when he heard one nun say to a few other nuns: "To the train, sisters!"
Now see I had always heard the inventor had hit a mental road block so he went on a 3 day bender with a bunch of coke and whiskey, where he and his bud ran a train on a transgender nun. After the wild weekend getaway he never could stop thinking of that hot trans sister.
Training the electricity😍
fire: exists
brain: *acceleration. yes*
Thank the employees of Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas in the 1960's & 70's for their innovation which made transistors useful for us today, for without them we would not be able to watch this video.