It is slightly more complicated than that unfortuantely...although the current nomenclature is more cargo cult than meaningful. I could produce a physically sm

It is slightly more complicated than that unfortuantely...although the current nomenclature is more cargo cult than meaningful. I could produce a physically smaller transistor, with a smaller gate, source, and drain. However, depending on the limitations of my process changes for scaling I may not actually be able to pack transistors more tightly. Notionally, the smaller transistor could use less energy which improves the chip design, but not be packed more tightly. There is more than one way to improve a semiconductor at the feature, device, and chip level. The node naming is a useful convention for the industry because saying something like '10nm' efficiently communicates historical context, likely technological changes, timelines, and other things that have nothing to do with the physical size of the devices on the chips. It's basically a form of controlled vocabulary.