5 ms·
First though, "5nm", "3nm" and so on are just marketing names. There is nothing about "5nm" that makes it "5nm" other than the company in question saying it is.
by weatherlight 5y ago
First though, "5nm", "3nm" and so on are just marketing names. There is nothing about "5nm" that makes it "5nm" other than the company in question saying it is. Some things are smaller than 5nm on a given 5nm node, and some are larger. I cannot recall exactly what node this started to be the case (there used to be an actual definition, one for DRAM, one for logic), but it was in the past two decades and got particularly ridiculous beginning around "28nm" up to now.
The really concerning physical dimension for quantum tunneling to occur/not occur is "gate length," and that's been basically sitting around ~16nm (actual, real, literal 16nm), plus or minus a few nanometers (depending on the manufacturer and process in question), since about "45nm" (mid-late 2000s). So that one critical dimension isn't getting smaller. And there isn't much they can do about it right now.
They are still shrinking other dimensions though, and things don't work like they used to. Powered off transistors aren't really off, and leak power.
The workaround for this is that they just use bigger transistors in certain places for what's called "power gating". You get the benefits of having tons of small transistors, with a slight area penalty.
In addition to power gating, they have made substantial improvements to the design of the transistors themselves. Gates now wrap around the channel on 3 sides, creating a device known as a Finfet. Silicon dioxide is no longer used as an insulator to the same extent -- hafnium dioxide preforms much better as an insulator. Gates are now metal instead of polysilicon. And there's an assortment of other changes that have occurred or are on the way. So performance has actually managed to improve somewhat, and things have still gotten smaller. The end is near... but not quite yet.
Gate length is not going to budge much unless some miracle occurs, though.
- baybal2 5y agoThe theoretical half pitch size limit for a single exposure EUV is Lambda * 2 or 26nm. You can get arbitrarily small at the cost of exploding count of masks. I.E. double patterning needs 2X masks, but quad patterning needs 8X. Octuple patterning is completely impractical.
- Misdicorl 5y agoCan't they use a smaller wavelength source? Nothing special about 13nm afaik
- baybal2 5y ago13nm * 2 is 26nm. Using a smaller wavelength is kind of useless for the optical lithography, as below this photons will make too many secondary electrons which will reduce the effective resolution. This is the reason X-ray lithography went nowhere. This is why the ultimate limit of 157nm lithography was also not so far away from EUV. Also somewhere in between 25nm-30nm This is also why some people suggest resurrecting 157nm — getting nearly same half pitch without maintenance, and expensive tooling of EUV.
- Filligree 5y agoThe design of EUV lasers is already completely absurd. It's an awesome piece of engineering, but it's no easier to push the laser wavelength downwards than anything else.
- Misdicorl 5y agoDoes the lithography require the tight wavelength or other nice properties of lasers? I had thought they used filtered synchrotron output since a while ago. Basically everything about the process is absurd, not sure why pushing on the light source is less feasible then any of the other knobs
- lazide 5y agoDiffraction limit becomes a real problem at these feature sizes even with short wavelength light, and the physical properties of short wavelength light start to damage equipment and cause serious other issues even at the current levels. At some point it’s switching from ‘lots of wiffle balls in a stream’ to ‘high power machine gun fire’, and the physical properties of everything involved become very limiting.
- sbierwagen 5y ago
- N00bN00b 5y ago>but it was in the past two decades and got particularly ridiculous beginning around "28nm" up to now. I wonder if that is some kind of cultural shift that is taking place that started around 2009, or if it's always been like this and I just never noticed. BMW model numbers used to more or less accurately reflect engine sizes, not anymore, it's just numbers now. 2G, 3G, 4G used to mean something, not anymore. I could add a remark about the federal reserve, but... I'll just stay away from that. Don't want to be too edgy/turn this into a political discussion (I just think it's interesting from a cultural perspective). It's like we collectively decided that "it's just numbers, man."
- Frost1x 5y ago>It's like we collectively decided that "it's just numbers, man." People with no scruples realized it's easier/cheaper to confuse and persuade people something is better than actually producing something better and that conventional wisdom was wrong. It's a lot easier to invest in propoganda that convinced improved perceived value than actual value. It's win-win, the consumer thinks they're happy and the producer doesn't have to deal with the mess of hurdles in reality to continue to make money. Conventional wisdom says people are smart and will see through your snake oil, meanwhile, empirical data says people will drink the snake oil if you tell them it's from the fountain of youth.
- markdown 5y agoAdvertisers ruin everything.
- JuettnerDistrib 5y ago"our code is fast, flexible, and easily modifiable"
- TeMPOraL 5y agoAdvertising is cancer on modern society. http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html
- 5y ago