Abstract

Modern electronic devices commonly used every day around the globe are capable of processing impressive amounts of information almost instantly. At the core of their capabilities lies their ability to perform vast numbers of mathematical operations in a fraction of a second. Under several layers of software and hardware, electronic devices’ mathematical abilities lie in core components, including central processing units (CPUs) and memory devices (such as random access memory (RAM)), which are composed at their core by large arrays of a single basic component: the transistor. Nowadays, commercial CPUs incorporate up to 20 billion of these building blocks into the same chip, arranged into digital logic gates capable of performing basic mathematical operations.