Transistors

Transistors are remarkable stuff. So tiny. Simple principle of operation. Yet so useful. In analog designs, they're basically amplifiers and filters. In digital world, they're simply switches. But how come i still don't understand some (maybe most) of their behaviour?? Is it because people are now making them smaller and smaller? (the newest intel processor uses the 65nm wide transistor i think) Or perhaps we now use smaller voltages? Dude, let me tell you one thing. There are so many interesting (or rather, strange and unusual) facts about these transistors that you can find out simply by running simulations on a computer, but not covered in enough details in any textbooks. Simple stuff like, in a normal inverter, why does a pull-up pmos get slower in charging a load when the source supply voltage is lowered? For extremely tiny transistors, there's also another interesting fact that lacks exposure in textbooks. In texbooks, very narrow transistors will get saturated faster with increasing Vds due to velocity saturation effect. What they do not emphazise, however, is apart from velocity saturation effect that's a function of the applied electric field across drain-source, there's another important factor that can affect drain calculation significantly. It's mobility degradation. It changes the mobility 'constant' which is actually a function of Vgs. Okay, please do get confused :-(