5 ms·
Is this just further marketing malpractice or will there actually be 5 or 3nm features?
by RandomTisk 7y ago
Is this just further marketing malpractice or will there actually be 5 or 3nm features?
- SethTro 7y ago> Today, the node names are little more than marketing terms. 'The node designation is becoming more misleading and meaningless," said Samuel Wang, an analyst at Gartner. "For example, at 5nm or 3nm, there is no single geometry that is actually 5nm or 3nm."
- hartator 7y agoSo what is 5nm or 3nm?
- aarongolliver 7y agoIt has about the same meaning as the 5 or 3 in "core i5" or "core i3". It's all marketing.
- wmf 7y agoThe process marketed as 5nm has roughly twice the density as the process marketed as 7nm and so on up and down the line; that's how they justify it.
- AlexCoventry 7y agoHow can they double the density without decreasing the feature size?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tandr 7y agoI am wildly speculating here, but maybe going 3rd dimension?
- wmf 7y agoThe feature side usually does decrease every generation; it's just that the feature size for, say, a "7nm" process is not exactly 7nm.
- ggm 7y agoThe power of recursive reasoning. Induction tells us that Intel's 10nm process probably wasn't 10nm features...
- trianglem 7y agoWhy is this not considered misleading and regulated?
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoThis is considered misleading. But why would it be regulated? Nobody buys a chip based on the advertised feature size. They buy on power use, MIPS, number of cores, and cost.
- wolf550e 7y agoIt's still a marketing term that has nothing to do with specific feature sizes, but they do increase density from one node to another. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/5_nm_lithography_process https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/5_nm_lithography_process
- dwaltrip 7y agoHow are the numbers chosen if they don't correspond to any actual measurement?
- wolf550e 7y agoLike the numbers in product names, only with the understanding that smaller is better.
- ip26 7y agoWell, the old law was that density doubled with each node. Indeed, you can see that e.g. from TSMC7 to TSMC5, density roughly doubled, regardless what happened with minimum feature size.
- blp 7y agoIt is an equivalent scale. Density is fine pitchm2 pitchtrack height. You scal node by an equivalent reduction. It would be better to use logic density, but it is easier to use numbers we are used to.
- wmf 7y agoThe numbers are a factor of the square root of 2 since that reduces area by 2.
- Rexxar 7y agoThey divide by sqrt(2) and round to an integer.
- stygiansonic 7y agonm is the new GHz/MHz.
- gameswithgo 7y agoit speaks to this IN the article. Why is this low effort post at the top?
- numpad0 7y agoBecause it’s mentally easier to vote and move on than read TFA and discover items to rage on
- szatkus 7y agoTSMC started using names like N7, N5 etc. recently.