5 ms·
Number represents transistor density. 2nm has ~twice the density of 4nm. If you ignore nm as unit of distance it makes sense.
by blackoil 3y ago
Number represents transistor density. 2nm has ~twice the density of 4nm. If you ignore nm as unit of distance it makes sense.
- phonon 3y agoDimensions go by 1/root(2) to double density...so about .7 per generation.
- _heimdall 3y agoThey're using the wrong units if we need to consider the nanometer as something other than a measure of distance.
- defrost 3y agoIn some applications it helps to be fluid in exchanging distance as time with time as distance. http://dataphys.org/list/grace-hopper-nanoseconds/ http://dataphys.org/list/grace-hopper-nanoseconds/ and the field of play here isn't 1D linear .. it's somewhere sort of a bit slightly > 2D (elements can be stacked, there are limitations on how much and how close)
- exe34 2y agoWait till you talk to theoretical physicists who set c=h-bar=1.
- _heimdall 2y agoI have more fundamental concerns to talk with a theoretical physicist about first :D Time to kick an ants nest here... Quantum mechanics is a useless study that had no business being a scientific field. The most fundamental principles, like quantum superposition, can never be tested or validated and therefore could never be used to be predictive of anything other than similarly theoretical ideas.
- exe34 2y agoShut up and calculate.
- bee_rider 2y agoI don’t think they drop the dimensions, just the constants.
- exe34 2y agoIt's equivalent to the 1.6nm != 1.6 nm though.
- bee_rider 2y agoI mean, I get that this is a joke so I’m not going to over-analyze it, but using the fundamental physics constants as units is a totally reasonable thing to do, and nothing like using nm as a unit of… area? Density? Marketing term? It is a mess whatever it is.
- SAI_Peregrinus 2y agoThink of them as "node metrics". 1.4 node metrics, not nanometers. They haven't referred to any distance in years, so make up your favorite backronym. Å can be Åwesomes, so 1.4 node metrics = 14 Åwesomes. Embrace nonsense, the chip makers did!
- misja111 3y agoNope that's what it meant a long time ago. Nowadays, the nm number represents the smallest possible element on the chip, typically the gate length, which is smaller than the size of a transistor. This means that when different manufacturers use a different transistor design, their 'nm' process could be the same but their transistor density different.
- yau8edq12i 2y agoNo, it's not even related to gate length or any kind of physical feature anymore. It's a purely marketing term. A "3 nm" node has a gate length around 16-18 nm.
- s3p 2y agoOP isn't wrong. Once the switch was made from 2D to 3D gates, transistor numbering became "this is the performance you would expect if you COULD shrink a gate to x nm", and while it's inaccurate it lets people understand how differentiated a new generation is from the previous ones. It also lets them stay consistent with understanding the progression of chips over time as in most of the history of silicon the generations were defined by the gates' nm sizing.
- hinkley 2y agoWe should have switched to gates per mm² long ago. IMO that covers the 3D problem fine. Doesn’t cover variance in feature size by task though. If the gates for a multiplier or cache need more space per gate than a logical OR then the marketing guys still get a little victory over truth. We could just divide total gates by surface area for the chip, but that would confuse the process efficiency with the implementation details and then we sacrifice instructions per second for a marketing number.
- fennecbutt 2y agoI'd say mm3 really, means it works going into the future when we can hopefully make something like a 10mm3 chunk of silicon. Gimme that computronium!
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoWouldn't 2nm have 4x the density of 4nm?