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iPhone 15 Pro’s 3 nm A17 chip will blow away competition thanks to TSMC deal
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoSome more discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37036217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37036217
- sschueller 3y agoFrom what I have read 3nm means the smallest gap is 3nm not the whole chip has 3nm spacing between traces. A significant part is probably still 5nm or even 7nm. IMO the difference between 5nm and 3nm is small and more marketing than anything else. The advantage Apple has is the design of the chip and how they can use it with their OS.
- Kirby64 3y agoThis is how process nodes have always been discussed. 3nm is the smallest feature size. That said, no, most devices that are digital logic DO scale proportionally. And the A17 series, almost everything is digital logic, so I expect it will either be substantially smaller or more performant, or likely both. TSMC claims the following (vs. 5nm): * 25-30% power reduction (for same logic) * 10-15% performance increase (for same logic) * 1.7x reduction in area (for same logic) (i.e., -42% size)