7 ms·
Getting very close to the end now. The nearest-neighbor distance between Si atoms in a crystal is 0.235 nm, so a feature with 3nm width is 12.7 Si atoms across
by not2b 6y ago
Getting very close to the end now. The nearest-neighbor distance between Si atoms in a crystal is 0.235 nm, so a feature with 3nm width is 12.7 Si atoms across. It is amazing that this can be done, and the physics are increasingly weird at this level of scaling.
- robin_reala 6y agoIt’s worth pointing out that these node names are only mildly related to feature size at this point.
- api 6y agoThey are more like minimum possible feature size, not average feature size. The real metrics you want to look at are things like transistor density, power density, power use, etc.
- microcolonel 6y agoAnd even those things need to be assessed in the context of a specific design.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mdorazio 6y agoIndeed. I know there was a working 1nm node transistor out of Berkeley a couple years ago, but as far as I know that's pretty close to the limit. I'm really curious what will come after we hit that in production in ~10? years.
- deepnotderp 6y agoCan you link to that?
- mdorazio 6y agoSure thing: https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2016/10/06/smallest-transistor-1-nm-gate/ https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2016/10/06/smallest-transistor-1-...
- deepnotderp 6y agoThanks!
- ben_w 6y agoSingle-atom transistors are a thing. I can’t even begin to guess how difficult anything like that will be to mass-produce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-atom_transistor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-atom_transistor
- IanCutress 6y agoIntel has a roadmap to 1.4nm
- IanCutress 6y agohttps://www.anandtech.com/show/15217/intels-manufacturing-roadmap-from-2019-to-2029 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15217/intels-manufacturing-ro...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- amq 6y agoThere are plenty of areas for improvement beyond pure transistor size: - density - heat - resistance
- dekhn 6y agoThe real limits to performance aren't Moore's law: it's heat dissipation and the speed of light. We could do tons of high quality ML with 10nm+.
- Animats 6y agoIt's getting worse for AI chips and better for memory. GPU-type devices doing machine learning have all that compute silicon running flat out all the time, all emitting heat. Flash memory, at least so far, doesn't seem have the data rate to have a heat problem. At any one time, most of the device is inactive. It's amazing that there are 2 terabyte USB sticks for US$40.
- deafcalculus 6y agoIt is getting worse for Flash. There are consumer M.2 SSDs that have huge heatsinks and some even with fans! Mark Cerny says this is a concern for PS5 which will have user expandable SSD storage. Unlike SATA drives, the M.2 standard doesn't define z-height, and the drives that meet the PS5 min spec are too thick right now.
- wtallis 6y agoThe main problem there is the SSD controller interfacing between the flash memory and the CPU. Right now, the only SSD controller that supports PCIe gen4 speeds and is small enough to fit on a M.2 card is a controller made on TSMC's 28nm process. Everybody else in the industry decided to move to TSMC's 16/12nm processes before trying to ship a high-performance PCIe gen4 SSD controller. Doing really advanced error correction at 5+ GB/s takes some juice, so SSD controllers have to follow in the wake of CPUs and smartphone SoCs by moving to smaller but more expensive (at least up front) process nodes.
- literallycancer 6y ago>It's amazing that there are 2 terabyte USB sticks for US$40 There aren't. There are scam products that claim to have 2 terabytes capacity though.
- zionic 6y ago>so a feature with 3nm width Sigh, another post... another top comment not understanding that marketing name =/= any actual feature size anywhere on the chip. I've been reading threads like this for 10+ years now, and somehow this knowledge has still not permeated the tech culture here and on reddit.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jonplackett 6y agoand you're even getting downvoted for pointing it out...
- nitrogen 6y agoThe comment is not in the gray as I write this, but one tends to get better results generally by providing more information in a positive light, rather than simply saying that something is wrong without providing anything better. For example, if the parent comment had said, "Yes, the control over small numbers of atoms is interesting. Although transistors are going to be much larger than that, it is cool that the shrinking feature size allows [making up a "fact" here for demonstration purposes] edges of transistors to be sharper and a little closer together, so yields are higher for a given transistor density," then it would be more useful and better received. Also, remember "today's 10000": https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- craftinator 6y agoBut keep in mind, the parent poster likely didn't mean his words in a positive light. To portray them as such would be dishonest, which is unethical, confusing to all involved, and would lead to further confusion and incoherence as the conversation progressed.
- jonplackett 6y agoand now I'm downvoted for pointing out that it's being pointed out... will it ever end? (it was in the grey when I commented, but i upvoted it so I think that brought it back into the black)
- shantara 6y agoIt's not going to happen any time soon, but I'm looking forward to "computronium" as described in sci-fi - a computing substrate optimized at the molecular level to the point that the performance becomes the function of its volume.
- lotyrin 6y agoI guess if we hit the edge of feature density, we might start building things out of 3d FPGA type designs of homogeneous modules but because of heat, the capacity of such a design is ultimately going to be limited by its surface area, not its volume, no?
- craftinator 6y agoMy CPU is a sphere!
- ivalm 6y agoI wonder if we can go to even higher density. From entropy constraints, computing performance asymptotically scales with surface area [0,1]. The general bound is Bekenstein bound[2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_thermodynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_thermodynamics [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound
- Filligree 6y agoThe bound exists, but it's so many orders of magnitude out that for all practical purposes we don't need to worry about it. Of course, however, heat dissipation presents similar challenges.
- elcritch 6y agoIt'll be interesting to see how/if quantum effects will be used in future computing tech (well aside from the whole quantum bangaps in semi-conductors). Effects like thermal super-conductors could enable much higher heat in a given area, perhaps built with quantum dots on semiconductors (IIRC, I thought some researchers tried that).
- gwern 6y agoHere's a helpful recent read on what the metrics mean and what semis are trying to replace them with: https://www.gwern.net/docs/cs/2020-moore.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/cs/2020-moore.pdf