6 ms·

Do 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.
  - lttlrck 7y ago
    Despite the change from unfinished rough cut to more dimensionally stable, dried and finished lumber, the sizes are at least standardized by NIST. Still a funny observation!
  - nimajneb 7y ago
    I thought it was because they planed the wood for you, a 2x4 is 2x4 before kiln drying and planing. https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/why-isnt-a-2x4-a-2x4-3970461 https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/why-isnt-a-2x4-a-2x4-3970461 That said I'm not sure why they don't sell it by it's actual size.
    - gruez 7y ago
      >However, even the dimensions for finished lumber of a given nominal size have changed over time. In 1910, a typical finished 1-inch (25 mm) board was 13⁄16 in (21 mm). In 1928, that was reduced by 4%, and yet again by 4% in 1956. In 1961, at a meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, the Committee on Grade Simplification and Standardization agreed to what is now the current U.S. standard: in part, the dressed size of a 1-inch (nominal) board was fixed at 3⁄4 inch; while the dressed size of 2 inch (nominal) lumber was reduced from 1 5⁄8 inch to the current 1 1⁄2 inch.[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#Dimensional_lumber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#Dimensional_lumber
gdxhyrd 7y ago
It is common knowledge even among consumers that pick PC parts.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
  So the theory is that Intel and others do this for marketing purposes. In other words, they predict that they will sell more parts if they name them this way instead of quoting the physical dimensions. There is no other reason to do this than for marketing purposes. That must mean, that this marketing works to some degree. Therefore, it cannot be common knowledge amongst everyone who buys PC parts. Or it might be somewhat known but still affecting their shopping choices. If it was truly common knowledge, there would be no incentive to keep naming them this way?
  - gdxhyrd 7y ago
    It does not matter. Those that know use it as the ID for a process and it is fine. Those that don't, don't really need to know. There is much, much worse marketing out there to tackle first.
rusticpenn 7y ago
They make use of "innovative" ways of calculating the gate length.
andrewcchen 7y ago
In recent years the node names don't correspond to any physical dimensions of the transistors anymore. But since density improvements are still being made, they just continued the naming scheme. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Meaning_lost https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Meaning_lost
fungicide 7y ago
Plenty of info here. Enjoy https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node "Recent technology nodes such as 22 nm, 16 nm, 14 nm, and 10 nm refer purely to a specific generation of chips made in a particular technology. It does not correspond to any gate length or half pitch. Nevertheless, the name convention has stuck and it's what the leading foundries call their nodes" ..."At the 45 nm process, Intel reached a gate length of 25 nm on a traditional planar transistor. At that node the gate length scaling effectively stalled; any further scaling to the gate length would produce less desirable results. Following the 32 nm process node, while other aspects of the transistor shrunk, the gate length was actually increased"
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  That's some pretty bullshit quote-mining there. You stopped right before the important part: "With the introduction of FinFET by Intel in their 22 nm process, the transistor density continued to increase all while the gate length remained more or less a constant." I'll repeat it for you see you seem to keep missing it: transistor density continued to increase
dogma1138 7y ago
Because the naming is based on the characteristics as measured against a “hypothetical” single layer plain CMOS process at that feature size, this isn’t new the nm scale stopped corresponding to physical feature size a long time ago.

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.
- lttlrck 7y ago
  Despite the change from unfinished rough cut to more dimensionally stable, dried and finished lumber, the sizes are at least standardized by NIST. Still a funny observation!
- nimajneb 7y ago
  I thought it was because they planed the wood for you, a 2x4 is 2x4 before kiln drying and planing. https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/why-isnt-a-2x4-a-2x4-3970461 https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/why-isnt-a-2x4-a-2x4-3970461 That said I'm not sure why they don't sell it by it's actual size.
  - gruez 7y ago
    >However, even the dimensions for finished lumber of a given nominal size have changed over time. In 1910, a typical finished 1-inch (25 mm) board was 13⁄16 in (21 mm). In 1928, that was reduced by 4%, and yet again by 4% in 1956. In 1961, at a meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, the Committee on Grade Simplification and Standardization agreed to what is now the current U.S. standard: in part, the dressed size of a 1-inch (nominal) board was fixed at 3⁄4 inch; while the dressed size of 2 inch (nominal) lumber was reduced from 1 5⁄8 inch to the current 1 1⁄2 inch.[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#Dimensional_lumber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#Dimensional_lumber

gdxhyrd 7y ago

It is common knowledge even among consumers that pick PC parts.

Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
So the theory is that Intel and others do this for marketing purposes. In other words, they predict that they will sell more parts if they name them this way instead of quoting the physical dimensions. There is no other reason to do this than for marketing purposes. That must mean, that this marketing works to some degree. Therefore, it cannot be common knowledge amongst everyone who buys PC parts. Or it might be somewhat known but still affecting their shopping choices. If it was truly common knowledge, there would be no incentive to keep naming them this way?
- gdxhyrd 7y ago
  It does not matter. Those that know use it as the ID for a process and it is fine. Those that don't, don't really need to know. There is much, much worse marketing out there to tackle first.

rusticpenn 7y ago

They make use of "innovative" ways of calculating the gate length.

andrewcchen 7y ago

In recent years the node names don't correspond to any physical dimensions of the transistors anymore. But since density improvements are still being made, they just continued the naming scheme. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Meaning_lost https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Meaning_lost

fungicide 7y ago

Plenty of info here. Enjoy https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node "Recent technology nodes such as 22 nm, 16 nm, 14 nm, and 10 nm refer purely to a specific generation of chips made in a particular technology. It does not correspond to any gate length or half pitch. Nevertheless, the name convention has stuck and it's what the leading foundries call their nodes" ..."At the 45 nm process, Intel reached a gate length of 25 nm on a traditional planar transistor. At that node the gate length scaling effectively stalled; any further scaling to the gate length would produce less desirable results. Following the 32 nm process node, while other aspects of the transistor shrunk, the gate length was actually increased"

kllrnohj 7y ago
That's some pretty bullshit quote-mining there. You stopped right before the important part: "With the introduction of FinFET by Intel in their 22 nm process, the transistor density continued to increase all while the gate length remained more or less a constant." I'll repeat it for you see you seem to keep missing it: transistor density continued to increase

dogma1138 7y ago

Because the naming is based on the characteristics as measured against a “hypothetical” single layer plain CMOS process at that feature size, this isn’t new the nm scale stopped corresponding to physical feature size a long time ago.