Currently much of the industry is building chips in what is known as 90-nanometer technology.

The problem is that the United States isn't the only game in town anymore when it comes to building better chips.

Penn says that engineers have built chips on the outside of cylindrical substrates.

The goal over the next decade, he added, is to build chips that can hold more than one trillion switches.

The San Antonio plant was built in the early 1980's to build chips using the bipolar process, which is becoming less popular.

That means Intel can build chips that have multiple cores.

One option, as flabbergasting as it may seem, would be to simply build smaller chips and use the available die space for something different altogether.

The process has worked in computer simulations, and the researchers have built chips that they will begin testing in a few weeks.

He builds tiny chips for spacecraft, and thinks big about the future.

Still, Apple will have to hire contract fabs or other manufacturers to build chips using the improved designs.