system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why do high temperatures damage hardware, specifically cpu's and gpu's?

I've searched everywhere and haven't been able to find a straight answer as to why heat will make processors fail. 

Specifically temperatures >100C. 

What is actually happening on a microscopic and macroscopic level that is causing damage?
gpt
At the microscopic level, a CPU consists of hundreds of millions of transistors. A transistor is, at the most fundamental level, multiple layers of semiconductor material with different types of impurities. The transistors are only a few nanometers across, so the impurity atoms don't have to move far to render it useless, and higher temperatures aid atomic diffusion. The stress, caused by thermal expansion in a constrained system could also cause atomic-scale defects to form, which would affect its electrical properties.

At a macroscopic level, CPUs are made of several different materials. There's silicon, copper interconnects, dielectric materials like silicon dioxide, and plastic or ceramic packaging. All of them have different thermal expansion coefficients, so parts may begin to crack.