3 ms·

Up until about 2003 or so, scaling worked near-perfectly, so geometries were essentially the same from generation to generation. This meant that one number, des

by not2b 4y ago

Up until about 2003 or so, scaling worked near-perfectly, so geometries were essentially the same from generation to generation. This meant that one number, describing minimum feature size, told you what you needed to know. Eventually leakage current became a major issue, so fabs had to do major redesign and change the shapes of the transistors, and different foundries did this differently so that minimum feature length is no longer directly comparable. You can still compare density: how many transistors or gates in a given area.

scrlk 4y ago
> You can still compare density: how many transistors or gates in a given area. I would say that comparing density comes with its own caveats. E.g. SRAM is denser than logic, so a chip with a lot of cache could skew a density metric. I guess for a true "apples to apples comparison" of processes you'd want to implement the same design on separate nodes with a mixture of SRAM & logic. Are there any reference designs used for this?