> The further interesting thing I discovered is that this seemed to go way back with no particular change in the ratio. Exactly, as that's more or less what "p

> The further interesting thing I discovered is that this seemed to go way back with no particular change in the ratio. Exactly, as that's more or less what "process node" refers to today. I guess they don't want to change the metric as some could be confused by it. > But it bothered me, why should it be difficult to come up with a reasonably meaningful number? Just find out how many transistors can be placed in a given area, pretend they are laid out in a square, and find the number on a side, to calculate the linear density. There are plenty of other metrics. As usual, measuring only one number hides half the story. A process node is characterized by gate leakage and capacitance among others, for the electrical characteristics. Then, more meaningful surface area metrics are the size of an actual logic cell, like SRAM or a flipflop. Some processes lend themselves to optimizations that wouldn't be visible if just placing transistors side by side.