"The complexity of a modern processor is almost beyond comprehension. A working 1GHz core on ARM’s latest Cortex A9 processors occupies less than 1.5mm2, using the 65nm production process. To put that into perspective: a nanometre is a billionth of a metre, which means a nanometre is to a tennis ball what a tennis ball is to the planet Earth. “Microscopic” doesn’t even come close.

Yet, if that sounds impossibly fiddly, Intel’s latest Core processors are built using a 32nm process. While you might just be able to spot one of ARM’s cores with the naked eye, to see one of the 32nm transistors on an Intel chip, you would need to enlarge the processor to beyond the size of a house."