Silicon manufacturing is one of my obsessive interests. For anyone else interested in learning more, I've learned a lot from the Asianometry YouTube channels.
Insane engineering. The diameter of a silicon atom is about 0.2nm for context.
It's also bullshit as it has no bearing on the actual properties of the chips. Manufacturers use these as product names. Here's an article discussing it.
https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/tsmc-7nm-5nm-and-3nm-are-just-numbers
Its magic. Can't believe we have the technology to do so.it does mean we're fast approaching the hard limit where new innovations will have to be made beyond making the electronics smaller and more dense.
While it is magic, and great engineering, it is also 'just' marketing, as in, actual physical features are not 1.6nm but more around 20nm, see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_nm_process
Wait, so everything since 22nm has been just marketing hype?
Interesting read!
Perhaps photonic processors will be the next big thing. But that's still well in the future.
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