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TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
11–20 of 111 posts
Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
#12Note that the TSMC 7nm process is similar in feature size to Intel 10nm.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nanometer#7_nm_process_nod...
Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
#13Wow. I still remember being amazed when micron widths came out. 7nm is close to a miracle. Semiconductor manufacturing improvements like this really have enabled the whole tech world improvements of the last few decades.
In a sense it has been the "free lunch" of the industry, much like stored energy in hydrocarbons has been for manufacturing in general.
But the supposed exponential curve that stock markets loves to salivate about seems to once again turn into an S curve.
Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
#14Wow. I still remember being amazed when micron widths came out. 7nm is close to a miracle. Semiconductor manufacturing improvements like this really have enabled the whole tech world improvements of the last few decades.
There isn't any feature of the transistors taht are 7nm wide, the smallest feature IIRC is the interconnect, which is about 30n-40nm. "7nm" is marketing wankery. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process
Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
#15Did any chip vendor announce 7nm chips yet? Or is this still secret?
AMD's Zen2, which should come in or around 2019, will be on GloFo's 7nm.
I believe TSMC will use 7nm for some memory and mobile applications.
As for Intel their largely accepted equivalent to other foundries' 7nm is their 10nm, which is introduced in Cannon Lake/Ice Lake.
Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
#16Note that the TSMC 7nm process is similar in feature size to Intel 10nm. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nanometer#7_nm_process_nod...
Strange that there's no citation for that claim.. do you have one?
Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
#17I wonder how reliable and durable 7nm chips will be. We might start to see chip failures even after a few years of use. https://semiengineering.com/transistor-aging-intensifies-10n...
Good question. Node size used to have a pretty firm definition, but it's malleable these days.
Regardless of the absolute number, you can think of it as defining the smallest width of pencil you are used to make a drawing with. You can still use fatter pencils, and in many cases you would want to... shading in a large area for example. But having the smaller pencil lets you put in finer details.
Some thing just won't work if they are too small though, so even though you have a fine sharp pencil available to use, somethings will not change.
Regarding reliability over time, electromigration is the only thing I know of in a typical IC that causes degradation. It is affected by the size of conductors, so potentially things could get worse. It's a well understood phenomenon though so it's usually mitigated by design rules.
Non volatile memories have their own degradation problems.
Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
#18I have a question - why does the fab machine lithographic printing etch out a half a chip on the edge of the wafer like in the article picture. I presume the wafers are a standard 300mm size, so is it just because the designers were too lazy to remove the half chips on the edges from their mask template designs ?
Aha I had a question too why wafers are round. The answer is Crystals form in a cylinder then sliced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_(electronics)#Formation. Sorry it doesn't answer your question but helped me. :)
Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
#19Wow. I still remember being amazed when micron widths came out. 7nm is close to a miracle. Semiconductor manufacturing improvements like this really have enabled the whole tech world improvements of the last few decades.
There isn't any feature of the transistors taht are 7nm wide, the smallest feature IIRC is the interconnect, which is about 30n-40nm. "7nm" is marketing wankery. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process
Thanks, kinda ruined my day but I learned something.
Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
#20Wow. I still remember being amazed when micron widths came out. 7nm is close to a miracle. Semiconductor manufacturing improvements like this really have enabled the whole tech world improvements of the last few decades.
There isn't any feature of the transistors taht are 7nm wide, the smallest feature IIRC is the interconnect, which is about 30n-40nm. "7nm" is marketing wankery. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process
Well that's annoying. How is anyone supposed to judge anything if they just make numbers up?