How did shrinking transistors increase the number of components on a chip?

The increase in the number of components on an integrated circuit is directly enabled by the reduction in the physical dimensions of transistors. By shrinking these components, manufacturers can pack a significantly higher density of them onto the same surface area of a silicon chip.12

This trend, famously described by Moore’s law, has seen transistor sizes decrease from millimetres in the 1940s to tens of nanometres in the 21st century—a reduction factor exceeding 100,000. As features moved from the micron scale in the 1980s to sub-micron and eventually nanometre scales, it became possible to manufacture increasingly complex microprocessors and high-capacity memory chips. This ongoing miniaturization allows for greater circuit complexity, enabling the high-performance electronic devices that define the modern Information Age.12