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Because TSMC is the fab that can mass produce today the highest density transistor count.
by tiffanyh 4y ago
Because TSMC is the fab that can mass produce today the highest density transistor count.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoThe customer doesn't care about density they care about performance. If you could somehow build a magical low density but performant chip that's what people would buy.
- ZoomerCretin 4y agoDensity = bigger cache, more cores.
- adastra22 4y agoAlso lower electrical resistance per compute cycle (energy, heat).
- bpye 4y agoIs that true? Density also means your chips are smaller which means you’re getting more parts on a wafer (though yield is important there).
- SilverBirch 4y agoThis is correct from a logical point of view but not a practical point of view. With a few major exceptions transistors basically are one shape and do one thing. So if you can scale the process node you scale the density, if you scale the density you scale the performance. It’s not like 1 transistor could you give you 0.01 flops and another could give you 0.02 flops, a transistor does 1 thing and it works or doesn’t (with a few caveats), and the second order effects don’t really overcome that.
- sroussey 4y agoOh, transistors are not one shape across nodes. Not anymore, and not for a long time. The planar version taught in beginning EE classes has evolved into various complicated 3D shapes.
- SilverBirch 4y agoYeah I know, I was putting caveats all over the place because first order, things are simple, but there's lots of complication. But in reality density == performance, and transistors are mainly just interchangeable. Yes, you could theoretically get a less dense transistor with a fantastic slew rate or some such property, but it's very unlikely it'll matter in a conversation about digital logic.