6 ms·
Getting close to the physical limits there, 1nm is just a couple of atoms across. "lattice parameter of 0.543 nm ... nearest neighbor distance is 0.235 nm"
by HPsquared 3y ago
Getting close to the physical limits there, 1nm is just a couple of atoms across.
"lattice parameter of 0.543 nm ... nearest neighbor distance is 0.235 nm"
- lazide 3y agoThere is likely nothing 1nm in this 1nm process.
- ksd482 3y agoWhat do you mean?
- FPGAhacker 3y agoExactly what he said. It’s a marketing number and has been for many years.
- rbanffy 3y agoThey could at least use a number that would reflect the current transistor density if they could have that number of nm with planar 1980's transistors.
- adastra22 3y agoIt has nothing to do with transistor density, and hasn't for twenty years.
- rbanffy 3y agoI know, but it could be nice if it were.
- WithinReason 3y agoIt does reflect transistor density. You can check this yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count#Microprocessors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count#Microprocesso...
- mjrpes 3y agoBack in 2019 Intel suggested the industry do this: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13405/intel-10nm-cannon-lake-and-core-i3-8121u-deep-dive-review/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13405/intel-10nm-cannon-lake-... But nm size is so baked into culture, it didn't take off.
- FPGAhacker 3y agoIt used to be MHz and GHz, then when that stalled, advertising nm became a thing. It can change. Angstrom is kind of a fun word, so I’m sure a few nodes will be named after that.
- audunw 3y agoTSMC now labels their process e.g. “N3”. So there has been a shift away from nm in some contexts. But it really doesn’t matter. There’s not a single physical number you can extract from the process that accurately describes its performance. So just continuing to use “nm” and assigning some number that feels right is actually a reasonable approach.
- bee_rider 3y agoTransistor density for just, like, a grid of unconnected transistors? Or some reference design or something like that? IMO it is interesting to get a general idea of where the companies are, but in the end the element size doesn’t matter to end users. People should check the linpack benchmarks of the chips that come out, or whatever.
- zozbot234 3y agoSRAM size has not been scaling at all in recent nodes, so these days the notion of uniform scaling is also breaking down quite a bit. This means that future designs will have less cache memory per core, unless they use chiplets to add more memory (either SRAM or eDRAM) close enough to the chip to become usable as some kind of bespoke cache.
- atq2119 3y agoJust for the record, the "not at all" part is incorrect for the nodes I'm aware of. Correct would be "way worse", i.e. it's still getting denser, but the improvement is way worse than that of random logic.
- wtallis 3y agoTSMC's N3E (their first 3nm that will actually see broad use) has the same SRAM cell size as N5. Their original 3nm had 5% smaller SRAM cell size than N5, but that turned out to be too aggressive and the process was too expensive for most of their customers. So for the time being, TSMC has indeed hit a wall for SRAM scaling. But it looks like N3P will be able to shrink SRAM again.
- wmf 3y agoThat's what it is.
- automatic6131 3y agoOnce again, the "process size" are marketing numbers. There's no actual feature measuring 1nm. The actual transistors are around 40nm across [1]. They change the geometry of the features, either the shape of the transistor gate or even the method of power delivery. All really incredible features and worthy of awe. Just not actually making transistors with finger-countable number of atoms. [1] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2_nm_process https://www.wikiwand.com/en/2_nm_process
- spenczar5 3y agoI have often heard that these are “just marketing.” But humor me - where does the “1nm” even come from? What is the calculation that ends up spitting out 1nm, even if its invalid?
- Detrytus 3y agoBasically, the calculation is: "previous process name x 0.6, rounded up", or something like that. So you get 65, 40, 28, 20, 14, 10, 7, 5, 3, 2, 1 ...
- whimsicalism 3y agoliterally it is made up
- nabla9 3y agoThe latest ASML machines Intel ordered position the wafer with accuracy that is half of the diameter of silicon atom.
- junon 3y agoIf this is true this is a mind-blowing fact to me.
- imtringued 3y agoIf you looked at the chip sideways we would be shooting way beyond femtometers, but if you happen to look at it from above then it's only 1 nm. Don't you think it's strange that the manufacturer is using metrics that make them look bad?
- kergonath 3y ago> If you looked at the chip sideways we would be shooting way beyond femtometers Considering that the order of magnitude of an atom’s radius is 1 Å (or 100 pm, or 100 000 fm), I really doubt any chip is thinner than 1 fm.
- vivzkestrel 3y agoimagine if we could take it down to 1 picometer