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Correct me if I’m wrong, but 2nm etc haven’t actually meant anything except “generation” for some time (except going down by 1 instead of up for marketing purpo
by transcriptase 3y ago
Correct me if I’m wrong, but 2nm etc haven’t actually meant anything except “generation” for some time (except going down by 1 instead of up for marketing purposes).
So do they have a plan for 2 generations from now with respect to naming or are they really going to start marketing 0 or negative “nm” nodes?
- cyberbanjo 3y agoPerhaps they'll change the acronym
- mappu 3y agoIt's only the press clinging onto this - TSMC themselves refer to it as N3B, N3E, N6/N7 etc, Intel's process is 10ESF or Intel 7, all without putting the "nm" there. It's still useful to roughly group different foundry processes, but nobody who is actually paying the $100mm++ to use these processes is relying solely on rough grouping.
- asadotzler 3y agonon-integral real numbers exist
- variaga 3y agoAnd there was a time when we used them in the not-too-distant past! In the '80s, processes were all in microns, not nanometers. In the '90s nodes were described as 'sub-micron' and 'deep sub-micron' processes. It wasn't really until around 0.13u/130nm (early 2000s) when it became common to say "one-thirty nanometer" instead of "point one three micron". I doubt anyone will actually have a problem saying "one point five nanometers" (or whatever) for the next node.
- jevogel 3y agoIntel is already using 18A (Angstrom).
- teddyh 3y agoIt’s “18 Å”, not “18A” (which would be 18 Amperes). I would think that Intel would be keen to not be confused with either Ampere Computing or Nvidia’s Ampere GPU architecture.
- wmf 3y agoPeople don't know how to type accents though.
- pineconewarrior 3y agoIt's dang easy on Mac. You just hit alt + the key it looks similar to. Å = opt (AKA alt) + shift + a
- tromp 3y agoDoing that for all of a..z and A..Z gives å∫ç∂´ƒ©˙ˆ∆˚¬µ˜øπœ®ß†¨√∑≈\Ω ÅıÇδϩӈÔ˚Ò˜Ø∏Œ®Í†¨√∑≈ÁΩ
- diffeomorphism 3y agoHow would I know in advance that this gives Å and not Æ or à or Ā or  or À or Á or Ä? And how would I type the other ones? Don't have a Mac, so I actually don't know how it is supposed to be done.
- GeekyBear 3y ago> How would I know in advance that this gives Å and not Æ or à or Ā or  or À or Á or Ä? The same way you know in advance that CTRL+SHIFT+@ gives you Å in Windows? Both Windows and Mac can display an on-screen keyboard that will display the character that will be output if you press a key along with modifier keys like CTRL or Option.
- Detrytus 3y agoThat's a very US-centric view of things. On my Mac pressing "opt (AKA alt) + shift + a" gives me: Ą - which I much prefer, since it comes from my native language :)
- wmf 3y agoIntel calls it 20A/18A (Angstroms) instead of 2nm and maybe the next node will be something like 13A.
- fbdab103 3y agoDoes that have physical correspondence to anything? Smallest gap between units is 1.8-2nm?
- lbourdages 3y agoIt used to refer to the smallest feature they were able to print, not gate length. I don't even think it has a physical meaning anymore, hence why the fabs mostly dropped the nm suffix from their naming schemes.
- wmf 3y agoIt doesn't correspond to any physical size and hasn't for a while. The idea is that a sqrt(2) reduction in the marketing number is supposed to correspond to a significant increase in density and transistor performance.
- s3p 3y agoNot at all. It used to back when transistors were planar and their distance could be measured in nm, but now transistor gates are 3D and we're just lowering the number to what the equivalent performance might be if a theoretical transistor gate were that small.