Computer Basics: Chips and how Moore's Law works
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We discuss what constitutes a chip and why technology gets cheaper every year.
In this video we are going to be talking about chips and something called Moore's Law.
You've probably noticed over the last 10 or so years, if you're going to go buy an MP3 player, you can get a lot more storage for a lot lower price.
You probably have even done the thing where you're at the store and you think, \Well, I can get one now, or I could wait 6 months and see how far the price has dropped\ which might sound ridiculous but this is actually a trend that's been happening for a long time.
Let's talk about what makes a chip.
A chip is full of these little things called transistors, which are switches that can either be a 1 or a 0 (noticing a theme here?).
All of these transistors fit onto a chip, and that's how it stores information.
What makes these chips larger/faster is the amount of transistors on a single chip.
Moore's Law is the observation that the amount of transistors fit on each chip has doubled every two years since 1965.
This is important because it's making technology more affordable and accessible.