Its at least somewhat based on the transistor density increase they get from other techniques right? Like “3 nm” is the equivalent transistor size they’d need to get the same transistor density using 2005 chip design.
Comment on TSMC to make advanced 3nm chips in Japan
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 17 hours agoIf I’m not entirely mistaken there is still some basis to the nanometre number, it just doesn’t refer to the actual smallest feature size or gate pitch anymore. Basically in the mid-2000 Dennard scaling stopped working and ever since the nanometre numbers are “made up”. Dennard scaling was how most progress was made by just shrinking transistors. But that doesn’t mean just because Dennard scaling doesn’t work anymore there is no progress, it’s just harder to achieve. So the semiconductor manufacturers just continued naming their fabrication methods as if Dennard scaling still worked.
drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 hours ago
Lemming6969@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
They should count up by some benchmark. If x/mm^2 doesn’t capture the improvement anymore, and they aren’t shrinking things much anymore, benchmark some common output.
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 16 hours ago
It’s not necessarily about transistors/mm^2, there is also power consumption and clock frequency. Back in the mid-2000’s clock frequencies stopped just under 4GHz and then went down for a few years before going back up to way past 4GHz in the last ten years or so.
Lemming6969@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Yup that’s exactly what I’m talking about. They need a benchmark for what it can do, not the size of a part or a made up size for marketing.