Making microprocessors demands that the people who make them are as clean as the environment in which they work. This is because a microprocessor—itself about the size of a dime—contains millions of microscopic transistors. The tiniest speck of dust to a chip would be like a Godzilla-sized footprint to us, and it could ruin thousands of transistors. How Clean Is Clean? The ultra-clean environment where microprocessors are made is called a cleanroom. Class one cleanrooms are the cleanest of all, with no more than one speck of dust per cubic foot. How Small Is Small? Imagine a boulder large enough to cause traffic jams all over a big city. If one fell on Times Square in New York, it could stop traffic on many streets around it, and eventually stop traffic on adjacent streets through a ripple effect. The same is true of a speck of dust landing in the middle of a microprocessor. Just one microscopic particle can obstruct the chip's pathways, ultimately rendering it unusable. This enlarged image of a grain of salt on a piece of a microprocessor should give you an idea of how small and complex a microprocessor really is. Page 1 of 2