5 ms·
What happens when they get down to zero nanometers? Will they start using a different fake measurement, or go into the negatives?
by zja 4y ago
What happens when they get down to zero nanometers? Will they start using a different fake measurement, or go into the negatives?
- dmitrygr 4y agoreal numbers, dude... 0.9nm, 0.8nm, 0.6nm ...
- barbacoa 4y agoThis nomenclature is gonna get awkward soon. 0.2 nm is the diameter is a Si atom. Somewhere around 10^-35 they're going to hit the plank constant which is the smallest discrete measure of length.
- rowanG077 4y agoJust a nitpick. The plank length is not the smallest discrete measure of length. It's not even known whether our universe has discrete or continuous space at all.
- smolder 4y agoIt seems to me like maybe we should be referring to the resolution in atoms at this point. If and when lithography is accurate to the individual atom, that's the absolute end of miniaturization, right? (Unless maybe we start super-cooling chips to make them contract..? but that's not lithography.)
- IThoughtYouGNU 4y ago
- dmitrygr 4y agoCurrent "nm" values do not measure anything. No part of your "5nm" chip is 5nm in length/width/depth/etc. It's been a decade since that, why start now?
- 7speter 4y agoIntel seems to want to use angstroms as a unit (instead of intel 2(nm), it will be intel 20a, don’t know if an angstrom is a tenth of a nm.
- anitil 4y agoMy understanding (from undergrad a while back) is that they already jimmy the numbers. It used to be that X nm meant that the gate width was X nm. Now it (usually) means that the smallest feature you can find is maybe X nm. Closer to a marketing term like '3G'. Not that this isn't a real technical and industrial achievement, you just can't take the X nm at face value.
- rowanG077 4y agoMaybe you are joking but nanometer is just a unit. We can easily go below 1 nm. For example 500 picometers. In fact that's exactly what the semiconductor industry did when they moved below 1 micrometer.
- Latty 4y agoIntel have talked about future processes in terms of Angstroms (0.1µm), but for some time it's not been a real measure of size, just a marketing term. Intel has actually dropped the units and now calls their process nodes Intel 7, 4, 3. Apparently they plan to use 20A after that in reference to the Angstrom, although as before, not because they are actually measuring anything to that specific size.
- yarg 4y agoNot possible, obviously. But in a hypothetical scenario where process shrinking continued unabated by considerations such a particle size and uncertainty, a negated logarithmic scale would do for naming conventions. gen = offset + log(1/feature_size)
- hulitu 4y agoThis might be the best for some time until they get to -1 or Windows style version numbers. Notice how all those hype headlines publish little or no technical info ? This looks more like P(entium)R(ate) numbers.