content: If you build something that small isn't there a risk that it will break?  That actually happens all the time in processor manufacturing. This is grossly simplified, but essentially instead of making three separate plates for an i3, an i5, and an i7, they create a single plate then separate the resulting chips into i3s, i5s, and i7s based on how fucked up they are. One of the quadcores comes out with a malfunctioning core? Disable it and lock one of the others, then label it as a dual core. One of the processors malfunctions at the standard clock rate? Underclock it until its stable and sell it as a budget chip. The process is called binning, and is done in many different products. Sometimes this can work to your advantage; If your CPU was underclocked because it was unstable at the reference temperature, you can install some better cooling in your system and "overclock" the chip back to its normal setting. The transistors we work with right now are barely larger than a dozen nanometers, and enthusiast processors are packing nearly two billion of them. If only 0.1% of the transistors suffer from defects, that's still two million transistors. So yes, broken transistors are inevitable, and we've already figured out a way to "deal" with them.