4 ms·

We have already hit the wall. Decreases have been minimal, and came with a high cost. The numbers you hear about "7 nm", "5 nm", etc.. are just false. They do n

We have already hit the wall. Decreases have been minimal, and came with a high cost. The numbers you hear about "7 nm", "5 nm", etc.. are just false. They do not represent anything real. The real numbers have been around 20 nm for a decade. They decreased a bit with Intel's competitors achieving better lithography than them before them. And we are in the realm of tons of little tricks that improve density and performance - nothing really dramatic but there are still improvements here and there. The tens of billions of dollars thrown at research achieved them but it is not comparable to the good old days of the '80s, '90s and the '00s

paulmd 5y ago
Yes, to emphasize: "nm" marketing is just marketing. There is no dimension on a 5nm chip that is actually 5nm. It used to represent gate length and half-pitch but that stopped being true about 20 years ago and officially became nonsense about 10 years ago, it's "what size planar node do we think these features would perform like" now. Because it's all subjective now, companies went wild with marketing, because consumers know "lower nm => better". But, say, GF 14nm is much more comparable to Intel 22nm, and GF 12nm is still solidly behind late-gen 14++, probably more comparable to TSMC 16nm. Generally Intel has been the most faithful to the "original" ratings, while TSMC has stretched it a little, and GF/IBM and Samsung have been pretty deceptive with their namings. Intel finally threw in the towel a year or so ago and moved to align their names with TSMC, "10nm ESF" is now "Intel 7" (note: no nm) and is roughly comparable with TSMC 7nm (seems like higher clocks at the top/worse efficiency at the bottom but broadly similar), and they will maintain TSMC-comparable node names going forward. Anyway, to answer OP's question directly though, "what comes after 1nm" is angstroms. You'll see node names like *90A or whatever, even though that continues to be completely ridiculous in terms of the actual node measurements.
- corey_moncure 5y ago
  900 angstroms = 90 nanometers
  - akmarinov 5y ago
    Good bot
kllrnohj 5y ago
> And we are in the realm of tons of little tricks that improve density and performance - nothing really dramatic but there are still improvements here and there. I don't think that's fair. Density is still increasing fairly substantially. Just going off of TSMC's own numbers here: 16nm: 28 MTr/mm2 10nm: 52.5 MTr/mm2 7nm: 96.5 MTr/mm2 5nm: 173 MTr/mm2 Performance (read: clock speeds; but for transistors those are one & the same) are not really increasing, though, those have pretty much plateaued. And the density achieved in practice doesn't necessarily keep up, as the density numbers tend to be for the simplest layouts.

paulmd 5y ago

Yes, to emphasize: "nm" marketing is just marketing. There is no dimension on a 5nm chip that is actually 5nm. It used to represent gate length and half-pitch but that stopped being true about 20 years ago and officially became nonsense about 10 years ago, it's "what size planar node do we think these features would perform like" now. Because it's all subjective now, companies went wild with marketing, because consumers know "lower nm => better". But, say, GF 14nm is much more comparable to Intel 22nm, and GF 12nm is still solidly behind late-gen 14++, probably more comparable to TSMC 16nm. Generally Intel has been the most faithful to the "original" ratings, while TSMC has stretched it a little, and GF/IBM and Samsung have been pretty deceptive with their namings. Intel finally threw in the towel a year or so ago and moved to align their names with TSMC, "10nm ESF" is now "Intel 7" (note: no nm) and is roughly comparable with TSMC 7nm (seems like higher clocks at the top/worse efficiency at the bottom but broadly similar), and they will maintain TSMC-comparable node names going forward. Anyway, to answer OP's question directly though, "what comes after 1nm" is angstroms. You'll see node names like *90A or whatever, even though that continues to be completely ridiculous in terms of the actual node measurements.

corey_moncure 5y ago
900 angstroms = 90 nanometers
- akmarinov 5y ago
  Good bot

kllrnohj 5y ago

> And we are in the realm of tons of little tricks that improve density and performance - nothing really dramatic but there are still improvements here and there. I don't think that's fair. Density is still increasing fairly substantially. Just going off of TSMC's own numbers here: 16nm: 28 MTr/mm2 10nm: 52.5 MTr/mm2 7nm: 96.5 MTr/mm2 5nm: 173 MTr/mm2 Performance (read: clock speeds; but for transistors those are one & the same) are not really increasing, though, those have pretty much plateaued. And the density achieved in practice doesn't necessarily keep up, as the density numbers tend to be for the simplest layouts.