Eli12?
Comment on How we get to 1 nanometer chips and beyond
urshilikai@lemmy.world 1 week ago
can we please socially murder the sales team that rebranded the unit in nodes from something physically meaningful to a random countdown detached from reality? (1nm node does not have any bearing on critical dimension or size of the circuits)
certified_expert@lemmy.world 1 week ago
JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
Open any wikipedia article about “x nm process” and one of the first paragraphs will be something like this:
The term “2 nanometer”, or alternatively “20 angstrom” (a term used by Intel), has no relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch) of the transistors. According to the projections contained in the 2021 update of the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a “2.1 nm node range label” is expected to have a contacted gate pitch of 45 nanometers and a tightest metal pitch of 20 nanometers.[1]
It used to be that the “60nm process” was called that simply because the transistor gate was 60nm.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
The best thing you can do to understand this is watch the latest Veritasium video about ASML.
ASML figured out how to make ultraviolet light very close to X-Ray wavelength using some incredible physics and engineering.
lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com 1 week ago
We should call it nm…
Calling it nanometers does not make sense.
jj4211@lemmy.world 1 week ago
To be fair, the industry spent decades measuring a distance, so when they started doing features that had equivalent effects, the easiest way for people to understand was to say something akin to equivalent size.
Of course, then we have things like Intel releasing their "10 nm* process, then after TSMC’s 7nm process was doing well and Intel fab hit some bumps, they declared their 10 to be more like a 7 after all… it’s firmly all marketing number…
Problem being no one is suggesting a more objective measure.