What is the minimum number of transistors required to build a processor?

Question

From a purely theoretical level, how many transistors do you need to create a working processor?

Answer 1

Interesting, but hard to say. You will need to define some parameters:

• What set of commands
• in order or out of order
• conveyor belt or not
• prediction branch or not
• register width

The 8088 has a 29k transistor, but I doubt it will be what you are looking for.