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How is it possible to have 1.4nm transistors?
by kuu 7y ago
How is it possible to have 1.4nm transistors?
- riffraff 7y agothe "nm" doesn't mean what you think it means, since some time ago it's become unrelated to actual physical dimensions, and now it just means "a better process". EDIT: for something to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer
- ossworkerrights 7y agoSo it’s marketing speak.
- 0-_-0 7y agoNot exactly, it means something like "it has the same transistor density as if we shrunk transistors from about 20 years ago to 1.4 nanometers"
- davnicwil 7y agoThis comment is the first time I've seen the why of this number explained, thanks. Like, makes sense, it must be tied to some relative scale that's vaguely comparable across companies otherwise it's just kind of silly. I obviously can understand the 'marketing speak' argument but past a certain point it becomes literally nonsense if people are just using arbitrary numbers.
- jbverschoor 7y agoNever knew.. Ok.. so instead of nm, it is used as density. Shouldn't they just be using transistors per mm2, or maybe per cubic micron? mu3? I guess it's the same as LEDs.. watts/lumen.
- 0-_-0 7y agoApparently it's easier to do some hocuspocus and use nm than transition to Transistors per square micrometer. See this chart of how they relate: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/File:5nm_densities.svg https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/File:5nm_densities.svg
- wtallis 7y agoOne extra complicating factor is that each process node will have several different transistor libraries that make different tradeoffs between density and power/frequency. So a smartphone SoC will tend to have a higher MT/mm^2 number than a server CPU or GPU.
- Symmetry 7y agoYeah, the difference is more or less a factor of 3. The node gives you a smallest transistor size but making some transistors bigger than others lets you reach higher frequencies.
- ossworkerrights 7y agoThanks for this - great explanation!
- duelingjello 7y agoA Louis Rossmann meme that spawned a coffee mug: They're not lying, it's commercial real estate. https://youtu.be/7Tzz7-aOKHU?t=2m04s https://youtu.be/7Tzz7-aOKHU?t=2m04s
- chaoticmass 7y agoShrinkage!
- Nokinside 7y agoNames with nm are just so called commercial names. They don't match from company to company. Transistor density in millions of transistors per square millimeter is more relevant. For example: Intel 10nm is 101 MTr/mm², TSMC 7nm Mobile is 97 MTr/mm² so they are very similar.
- novaRom 7y ago* TSMC’s 7nm+ EUV is 115.8 MTr/mm² * TSMC’s 5nm EUV is 171.3 MTr/mm² Source: https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-fabrication https://www.techcenturion.com/7nm-10nm-14nm-fabrication I also would like to find any historical data on MTr/mm² just to see if there high correlation with nm names.
- wtallis 7y agoWikipedia has tons of transistor count and die size data for CPUs and GPUs. See eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_8_(8xxx)_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_proces... When comparing across generations, you'll get the most accurate picture if you stick with the same kind of chip (eg. desktop-class GPUs) and same vendor so that they're more likely to count transistors the same way from one year to the next.
- fungicide 7y agoBecause "nm" doesn't mean nanometer anymore. Not in the context of CPUs anyway. Some time back, around the 34nm era, CPU components stopped getting materialy smaller. Transistor count plateaued. Moore's law died. To avoid upseting and confusing consumers with this new reality, chip makers agreed to stop delineating their chips by the size of their components, and to instead group them in to generations by the time that they where made. Helpfully, in another move to avoid confusion, the chip makers devised a new naming convention, where each new generation uses "nm" naming as if Moore's law continued. Say for example in 2004 you had chips with a 34nm NAND, and your next gen chips in 2006 are 32nm, then all you do is calculate what the smallest nm would have been if chip density doubled, and you use that size for marketing this generation. So you advertise 17nm instead of 32nm. Using this new naming scheme also makes it super easy to get to 1.4nm and beyond. In fact, because it's decoupled from anything physical, you can even get to sub-plank scale, which would be impossible on the old scheme. Edit: Some comments mention that transistor count and performance are still increasing. While that is technically true, I did the sums, the Intel P4 3.4Ghz came out 2004, if Moore's law continued, we would have 3482Ghz or 3.48 TERAHERTZ by now.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y agoDo you have any sources for this? Where could one learn about this more carefully? I mean isn't this a major marketing fraud?
- nordsieck 7y ago> I mean isn't this a major marketing fraud? This isn't marketing fraud because you aren't being sold transisters like you buy lumber at Home Depot. Instead, you buy working chips with certain properties whose process has a name "10 nm" or "7 nm". Intel et. al. have rationalizations for why certain process nodes are named in certain ways; that's enough.
- gruez 7y ago>This isn't marketing fraud because you aren't being sold transisters like you buy lumber at Home Depot. Funny you say that, because "two by fours" used to be 2" x 4”, but became progressively thinner as manufacturing processes improved.
- agumonkey 7y agoyeah it's probably just the precision of the process but you might need 2-3 nm actual layers and features to operate. That said, people were dubious of 7nm and said it will never happen. Now we're talking about >2nm .. so who knows
- osamagirl69 7y agoPeople were dubious of 7nm back in 2005 because back then we had '90nm' devices where the 90nm referred to the gate width. Due to the fact that making a 7nm gate width is not only impractical (even the most advanced EUV lithography can't do it) but also would make the transistors work terribly--the fact that everyone form 2005 was referring to--the industry was forced to innovate. Their clever solution was to change their naming convention, and instead of naming each technology node after the actual gate width they just assign them a arbitrary number which follows moores law. [1] The actual gate width for a '7nm' process is somewhat ill defined (they look nothing like a textbook transistor), but depending on how you measure it the number comes in somewhere between 30-60nm. [2] Note that there is a number in the 7nm dimensional chart that comes in at 6nm, but that is the gate oxide thickness, and is actually getting _thicker_ over time. For example back in 90nm it was 1-2nm thick. That said, those skeptical of us ever producing a '7nm' transistor back in 2005 were right--by the naming convention used in 2005 we are still at ~40nm. I am sure that you will be able to buy a '2nm' processor according to the roadmap, but the actual transistors are still going to have a gate width closer to 30nm and their electrical performance is going to be within a factor of 2 of our current '7nm', and honestly probably going to be clocked slower. [1] https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node [2] https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process
- agumonkey 7y agoI think I've read some knowledgeable silicon guy saying he wouldn't bet a dime on 7nm quite a time after 2005 (2012~). But I forgot the details.
- kllrnohj 7y agoMeasuring gate width also stopped being relevant. Densities continue to increase, and significantly so, despite gate-width staying relatively constant. A 45nm process: i7-880, 45nm 774 million transistors 296 mm2 A "14nm" process: i7-6700k, 14nm 1.75 billion transistors 122 mm² That's still a huge increase in density. It no longer means what it used to, but the spirit of the definition is still very much alive.
- boatswain 7y agoThink of it as 1400 pm transistors.