[arbuge]

The wafer is a slab of polysilicon, and has been that way for a long time. Most of those trillions you mention were invested to make the lithography smaller, which is how you get more transistors into the same die.

Edit: silicon, not poly silicon. Not sure why I said poly there...

[kken]

No, simply no.

ICs are made of monocrystalline silicon, not polysilicon. There have been massive efforts to understand how to make it cleaner (internal gettering) and how to get wafer mechanics under control (Nitrogen doping). That does not even touch the changes in production technology to go from 10 mm Wafers to 300 mm Wafers. (You just make them larger, right...)

A lot of new concepts and materials have been introduced to ICs during the last decades. Especially since the 130 nm ground rule, lithography has not been the main limiter. Examples: Copper, Tungsten, Diffusion barriers, Silicide, Strained Silicon, High-k, metal gates, finfet, 3d integration etc...

[kijiki]

10 mm wafers? Were they ever that small? I've never heard of less than 1 inch...

[Tuna-Fish]

The transistors used today are very different from the transistors used back then, not just in size but also in structure and materials. The silicon die is pretty much the only part of the system that has stayed the same -- everything else has been changed, one part at a time.

[kragen]

You probably said "polysilicon" because this chip has some polysilicon deposited on top.