4 ms·

It's a deception. So many people believe that it is the actual gate size, even educated folk not directly involved in semiconductor manufacturing.

spamizbad 4y ago
Who is it deceiving? It sounds like the only people who get “tricked” are laypersons; professionals do not.
- gpm 4y ago
  Since when is it acceptable to trick laypeople, especially when laypeople are buying products with the false advertising (cpus...)?
  - dymk 4y ago
    2x4 lumber.
  - moooo99 4y ago
    > Since when is it acceptable to trick laypeople, especially when laypeople are buying products with the false advertising (cpus...)? This is such a HN issue. It's not tricking people because the vast majority of layman don't even care about node size, gate size or the manufacturing process. The number of times I have encountered a person outside of a tech bubble that cared about the manufacturing process of a CPU is exactly zero. What people do care about: does it work, is it fast, is it efficient and can I afford it. At least for performance and efficiency the marketing term does give a somewhat reliable indication of the generational gains.
- projektfu 4y ago
  Investors. Even more sophisticated investors can be bamboozled by various claims. Because investors are usually trying to pick the future winners, they need these things as proxies to determine who is actually going to have the faster chips, or the lower costs, etc. Analysts are often not from the exact line of business. They may have a bachelor's in engineering, or something, but they're usually not domain experts beyond having studied the field from a business perspective and gotten used to its lingo. So, these things can be kind of manipulative. That said, it's par for the course. It's better than outright lying and bribing the analysts like in the 2000-2002 telecom bust.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    If somebody has a bachelor's in EE and thinks the nm marketing value is an actual measurement they should see about getting a refund.
    - orangepurple 4y ago
      Investors talk about AI as if it is a real thing. Before that it was big data.
      - bee_rider 4y ago
        Colloquially lots of successful technologies have been referred to as "AI" and so it doesn't seem that unreasonable that investors could look into that kind of stuff. On the other hand, if somebody's investing strategy assumes, like, artificial general intelligence is coming soon -- investing involves risk and investing while stupid involves disproportionate risk I guess.
neogodless 4y ago
But even if you believe that, what do you do with that (mis) information? TSMC has continued to improve the process, and we've seen Apple and AMD design performant and efficient chips as the process improves. What changes if you don't understand the exact measurements involved?
- derefr 4y ago
  A mass misbelief in the continuation of Moore's law into impossible sub-molecular scales. There is no more low-hanging fruit of "just make the optics more precise to make the lithograph smaller"; every process-node step we're taking now is rather a "side-step" involving solving increasingly-complex puzzles to make the same-sized features do more per molecule. It's code golf, at a hardware level. And as in code golf, there's a pretty low ceiling as to how intricately interwoven features can become. You can't eliminate the fundamental need to have all those features in the code (circuit) in some sense. The actual visible effect of this is an economic one: we've gone from spending linearly more marginal CapEx per fab process-node upgrade, to spending geometrically more marginal CapEx. Each process node under 8nm has been twice as costly to design as the one before it. This is untenable.
  - patmorgan23 4y ago
    I wonder if at some point the industry will shift to focus on higher yields, economies of scale, and software that uses the hardware more effectively.
- sjburt 4y ago
  The particular measurements of the elements are not interesting, but the transistor densities are meaningful. I would expect a 1nm chip to achieve densities 100x a 10nm chip. That seems unlikely.
joshcryer 4y ago
It's not a deception, the transistor itself is 1nm, the gate is larger because of physics. We're talking transistor and gates composed of 100~ freaking atoms with transistors being in the dozen or so. And we are complaining that they're using the "wrong metrics." We are nearing Moores limit, might as well rejoice when they bleed out another nm or so and can pack in a few billion more transistors.
- wbl 4y ago
  Isn't the gate part of the transistor? Or can I pack multiple FETs with a common gate in denser?
- adrian_b 4y ago
  The active part of a FET is the area that is under the gate or surrounded by the gate. It makes no sense to speak about a transistor that would be smaller than the gate, there is no such thing. Besides the active part, whose conductance is controlled and variable, the transistor includes parts that are either electrical conductors, like the source , the drain and the gate electrode, or electrical insulators. While those parts may be less important than the active part, they also have a major influence on the transistor characteristics, by introducing various resistances and capacitances in the equivalent schematic. What matters is always the complete transistor. The only dimensions in a current transistor that are around 1 nm are vertical dimensions, in the direction perpendicular on the semiconductor, e.g. the thickness of the gate insulator. The 2D semiconductors that are proposed for the TSMC "1 nm" process are substances that have a structure made of 2D sheets of atoms, like graphite, but which are semiconductors, unlike graphite, which is a 2D electrical conductor. In this case the thickness of the semiconductor can be reduced to single layer of atoms, which is not possible with semiconductors that are 3D crystals, like silicon, because when they no longer form a complete crystal their electrical properties change a lot and they can become conductors or insulators, instead of remaining semiconductors. There is little doubt that for reducing the transistor dimensions more than it is possible with a 3D semiconductor like silicon, at some point a transition to 2D semiconductors will be necessary. It remains to be seen when that will be possible at an acceptable cost and whether such smaller transistors can improve the overall performance of a device, because making smaller transistors makes sense only when that allows a smaller price, smaller volume or higher performance of a complete product.
ksec 4y ago
> So many people believe that it is the actual gate size They never state it was the actual gate size in the first place. May be you should blame the media for it? And just to reply to parents. > TSMC does sometimes call the nodes eg "N7" now. It is not sometimes. TSMC has always been very careful and calling it N7 or N10 all the way back to 28nm era. What the media, marketing and other PR decided to call it are entirely different matter. This is especially problematic since ~2015 when they have gotten thousands if not millions times more media coverage.
runeks 4y ago
It fooled The Economist. In this article TSMC is depicted in a chart as having >90% market share for "<10nm gate size": https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/05/26/taiwan-is-worried-about-the-security-of-its-chip-industry https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/05/26/taiwan-is-worried-...
Symmetry 4y ago
Language drifts. You might as well be upset that a British pound is longer a pound of silver. Or that people now use "very", "really", and "literally" as intensifiers rather than as claims to absolute truth.

spamizbad 4y ago

Who is it deceiving? It sounds like the only people who get “tricked” are laypersons; professionals do not.

gpm 4y ago
Since when is it acceptable to trick laypeople, especially when laypeople are buying products with the false advertising (cpus...)?
- dymk 4y ago
  2x4 lumber.
- moooo99 4y ago
  > Since when is it acceptable to trick laypeople, especially when laypeople are buying products with the false advertising (cpus...)? This is such a HN issue. It's not tricking people because the vast majority of layman don't even care about node size, gate size or the manufacturing process. The number of times I have encountered a person outside of a tech bubble that cared about the manufacturing process of a CPU is exactly zero. What people do care about: does it work, is it fast, is it efficient and can I afford it. At least for performance and efficiency the marketing term does give a somewhat reliable indication of the generational gains.
projektfu 4y ago
Investors. Even more sophisticated investors can be bamboozled by various claims. Because investors are usually trying to pick the future winners, they need these things as proxies to determine who is actually going to have the faster chips, or the lower costs, etc. Analysts are often not from the exact line of business. They may have a bachelor's in engineering, or something, but they're usually not domain experts beyond having studied the field from a business perspective and gotten used to its lingo. So, these things can be kind of manipulative. That said, it's par for the course. It's better than outright lying and bribing the analysts like in the 2000-2002 telecom bust.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  If somebody has a bachelor's in EE and thinks the nm marketing value is an actual measurement they should see about getting a refund.
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    Investors talk about AI as if it is a real thing. Before that it was big data.
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      Colloquially lots of successful technologies have been referred to as "AI" and so it doesn't seem that unreasonable that investors could look into that kind of stuff. On the other hand, if somebody's investing strategy assumes, like, artificial general intelligence is coming soon -- investing involves risk and investing while stupid involves disproportionate risk I guess.

neogodless 4y ago

But even if you believe that, what do you do with that (mis) information? TSMC has continued to improve the process, and we've seen Apple and AMD design performant and efficient chips as the process improves. What changes if you don't understand the exact measurements involved?

derefr 4y ago
A mass misbelief in the continuation of Moore's law into impossible sub-molecular scales. There is no more low-hanging fruit of "just make the optics more precise to make the lithograph smaller"; every process-node step we're taking now is rather a "side-step" involving solving increasingly-complex puzzles to make the same-sized features do more per molecule. It's code golf, at a hardware level. And as in code golf, there's a pretty low ceiling as to how intricately interwoven features can become. You can't eliminate the fundamental need to have all those features in the code (circuit) in some sense. The actual visible effect of this is an economic one: we've gone from spending linearly more marginal CapEx per fab process-node upgrade, to spending geometrically more marginal CapEx. Each process node under 8nm has been twice as costly to design as the one before it. This is untenable.
- patmorgan23 4y ago
  I wonder if at some point the industry will shift to focus on higher yields, economies of scale, and software that uses the hardware more effectively.
sjburt 4y ago
The particular measurements of the elements are not interesting, but the transistor densities are meaningful. I would expect a 1nm chip to achieve densities 100x a 10nm chip. That seems unlikely.

joshcryer 4y ago

It's not a deception, the transistor itself is 1nm, the gate is larger because of physics. We're talking transistor and gates composed of 100~ freaking atoms with transistors being in the dozen or so. And we are complaining that they're using the "wrong metrics." We are nearing Moores limit, might as well rejoice when they bleed out another nm or so and can pack in a few billion more transistors.

wbl 4y ago
Isn't the gate part of the transistor? Or can I pack multiple FETs with a common gate in denser?
adrian_b 4y ago
The active part of a FET is the area that is under the gate or surrounded by the gate. It makes no sense to speak about a transistor that would be smaller than the gate, there is no such thing. Besides the active part, whose conductance is controlled and variable, the transistor includes parts that are either electrical conductors, like the source , the drain and the gate electrode, or electrical insulators. While those parts may be less important than the active part, they also have a major influence on the transistor characteristics, by introducing various resistances and capacitances in the equivalent schematic. What matters is always the complete transistor. The only dimensions in a current transistor that are around 1 nm are vertical dimensions, in the direction perpendicular on the semiconductor, e.g. the thickness of the gate insulator. The 2D semiconductors that are proposed for the TSMC "1 nm" process are substances that have a structure made of 2D sheets of atoms, like graphite, but which are semiconductors, unlike graphite, which is a 2D electrical conductor. In this case the thickness of the semiconductor can be reduced to single layer of atoms, which is not possible with semiconductors that are 3D crystals, like silicon, because when they no longer form a complete crystal their electrical properties change a lot and they can become conductors or insulators, instead of remaining semiconductors. There is little doubt that for reducing the transistor dimensions more than it is possible with a 3D semiconductor like silicon, at some point a transition to 2D semiconductors will be necessary. It remains to be seen when that will be possible at an acceptable cost and whether such smaller transistors can improve the overall performance of a device, because making smaller transistors makes sense only when that allows a smaller price, smaller volume or higher performance of a complete product.

ksec 4y ago

> So many people believe that it is the actual gate size They never state it was the actual gate size in the first place. May be you should blame the media for it? And just to reply to parents. > TSMC does sometimes call the nodes eg "N7" now. It is not sometimes. TSMC has always been very careful and calling it N7 or N10 all the way back to 28nm era. What the media, marketing and other PR decided to call it are entirely different matter. This is especially problematic since ~2015 when they have gotten thousands if not millions times more media coverage.

runeks 4y ago

It fooled The Economist. In this article TSMC is depicted in a chart as having >90% market share for "<10nm gate size": https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/05/26/taiwan-is-worried-about-the-security-of-its-chip-industry https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/05/26/taiwan-is-worried-...

Symmetry 4y ago

Language drifts. You might as well be upset that a British pound is longer a pound of silver. Or that people now use "very", "really", and "literally" as intensifiers rather than as claims to absolute truth.