Well being as the diameter of a silicon atom is 0.2 nm I’m guessing not long
Comment on TSMC says first 1.6nm chips coming in 2026
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m wondering how much further size reductions in lithography technology can take us before we need to find new exotic materials or radically different CPU concepts.
femboy_bird@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
We’ve already been doing radically different design concepts, chiplets being a massive one that jumps to mind.
But also things like specialised hardware accelerators, 3D stacking, or the upcoming backside power delivery tech.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I mean, chiplets are neat…but they are just the same old CPU, just in lego. and thats mostly just to increase yields vs monolothic designs. Same with accelerators, stacking, etc.
I mean radical new alien designs since we have to be reaching the limit of what silicon and lithography can do.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Photonic is the game changer. Putting little LEDs on chips and making those terabyte per second interconnects with low heat and long range and better signal integrity
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is what I’m talking about. This kind of weird, new shit, to overcome the limits we have to be running into by now with the standard silicon and lithography that we’ve been using and evolving for 40 years.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t think it is mostly just the same CPU with a slight twist. It’d be mind-blowing tech if you showed it to some electrical engineers from 20, 15, shit even 10 years ago. Chiplets were and are a big deal, and have plenty of advantages beyond yield improvements.
I also disagree with stacking not being a crazy advancement. Stacking is big, especially for memory and cache, which most chip designs are starved of (and will get worse as they don’t shrink as well)
There’s more to new, radical, chip design than switching what material they use. Chiplets were a radical change.