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Shuber-Fuber t1_ixue0yj wrote

Reply to comment by atlusblue in Taiwan's TSMC founder says 3nm fab will be built in US by jussulent_tummy

https://www.quora.com/Will-the-physical-size-of-the-processors-get-any-smaller-than-7-nano-metres/answer/Yowan-Rajcoomar?ch=15&oid=169904226&share=3d67d0a9&srid=i7kNj&target_type=answer

Basically, "3nm" doesn't refer to actual feature size anymore. It just means that there's an improvement from previous "x-nm" gen (maybe better density, smaller leakage current, faster gate speed, etc).

Because ultimately, it's performance. If you can keep the same size but, say, reduce the gate switching time by half, you functionally just have twice the performance for a given number of transistors.

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poqpoq t1_ixv36gf wrote

So at some point with this convention will we use negative nm? Or will we just drop to 0.9nm 0.8nm etc?

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jared555 t1_ixv9zzo wrote

Picometers would be the next logical step which means they probably won't use it.

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poqpoq t1_ixvc3n0 wrote

Yeah that was why I was wondering about stuff like 0.9nm. Pm won’t be recognizable to consumers and consumers will be confused that it’s a larger number.

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kyler000 t1_ixvsf1y wrote

To be fair, most consumers don't care about the size. They just want a computer/phone that's fast.

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jared555 t1_ixvdlig wrote

Looks like the last time they had to worry about it was around the 386->486 transition.

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glamdivitionen t1_ixwkbau wrote

Nah, we'll probably leave meters altogether and switch to Ångströms pretty soon.

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