Why do smaller transistors...

[Emil09]

...enable higher clock speeds? I don't understand the connection between the two.

 

[LTX71CM]

This is soooo far from technical and accurate but just thinking about it, it seems intuitive. A blade of grass can wiggle/oscillate much faster than a heavy steel vault door, smaller= more nimble and quick in most cases. I'll stick with that theory.

 

[dknguyen]

Less capacitance so they switch faster, less propogation delay because of smaller size, and I'm sure a crapload of other things.

 

[MikeMl]

Less capacitance so they switch faster,...

Bingo! As transistors got smaller, the Vdd was also reduced, so the internal node voltages do not have to slew as far.

 

[Emil09]

Ok, thanks guys. I had been wondering about this for a while because of all of the attention given to reductions in transistor size.

 

[crutschow]

Besides reducing power and increase speed, smaller transistor also allow the obvious of putting more transistor on a given size chip The smaller the chip the cheaper they are to make, so it's desirable to get as many transistor on a chip as possible.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Why is it faster to walk 1 mile instead of five miles? - the smaller the distance, the less time it takes.