Before the logic, the object. A processor is a fingernail of silicon under a copper lid, and its structure is visible at every scale from the package down to a single transistor.
Package
The lid, the thermal joint, the die, a small circuit board and about 1,700 gold contacts. Nearly all of it exists to deliver power, carry signals and remove heat.
Die
A few large, intricate cores, a shared cache between them, and interface circuits at the edge. Data moves along a ring through the cache and out to memory.
Core
Follow one instruction: predicted and fetched, decoded, renamed, scheduled, executed and retired. Notice how much of the area is cache.
Transistors
Fins of silicon crossed by metal gates. Charge the gate and the fin conducts; that single act, repeated billions of times, is everything the chip does.
Try it
On the Package level drag 'Pull apart' to zero to see the chip as it ships, then to 100%. Use 'Zoom in' to descend through all four scales, and click any part to read what it is.
A representative model of a modern desktop processor. Floorplans are illustrative; they are not a tracing of a specific product.