Here's an analogy: octane rating is "that level of knock-resistance that matches an N% mix of octane and heptane"; a 90% octane, 10% heptane mixture has an octa

Here's an analogy: octane rating is "that level of knock-resistance that matches an N% mix of octane and heptane"; a 90% octane, 10% heptane mixture has an octane rating of 90. So how can racing fuels exceed 100 octane? Well the underlying technology has changed--they use additives that exceed the anti-knock properties of octane--but measure the benefit on the old scale. The situation with photolithography is similar. At some point there was a N-micrometer process where transistor features actually had an N-micrometer size. Now we have 3nm processes where all the feature sizes are 40nm+, but it's called "3nm" because the new FinFET, GAA, etc. transistors produce the same results as what the old transistor tech would if it could be scaled down to legitimate 3nm sizes. So I have no doubt we'll eventually have "picometer" processes where all of the physical characteristics are still solidly in the nanometer range but they'll use something like 3d transistors to deliver densities comparable to what a hypothetical "0.01pm" process could deliver using flat FinFETs.