4 ms·
Did IBM beat them by over 2 years? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/ibm-creates-the-worlds-first-2-nm-chip/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/ibm-
by guidedlight 3y ago
Did IBM beat them by over 2 years?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/ibm-creates-the-worlds-first-2-nm-chip/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/ibm-creates-the-worl...
- babypuncher 3y agoI'm guessing not, since right at the top of that article, the average density of IBM's 2nm process is compared directly to that of TSMC's 3nm.
- Detrytus 3y agoIf you compare densities however, IBMs 2nm process claims 333MT, and the actual (not "estimated" as per article from 2021) density of TSMC 3nm is 215MT.
- rnk 3y agoThat number 333MT means millions of transistors per square millimeter, I get from that linked ars tecnica article. That seems like a much better way to compare different technologies in chip fabrication, because of the well known fact that these gate widths have lots of nuances that impact how many gates per unit of space can be used. Why don't we just use "millions of transistors per mm^2"? The concept seems obviously useful, until now I never thought of it.
- hexaga 3y agoSeems like a Goodhart's law situation to me. It would not stretch my credulity very much to see MT/mm^2 rapidly become just as nuanced (as feature size) if it were used for primary marketing.
- adgjlsfhk1 3y agoOne problem is that the measurement depends on what you're using the transistors for. You can fit more logic tranistors per mm^2 than cache transistors on recent nodes (capacitance is really annoying).
- diziet 3y agoThere is likely a giant difference between demonstrating a process vs scaling it to high yields at volume production.
- fooker 3y agoIBM is great at flashy demos that don't pan out in the end.