TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips • Hacker News Board

Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips

#101

Post by makomk » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 1:00 PM UTC

tfha wrote: post #67

quickben wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, after a while or is sort of public knowledge that 10nm Intel is about the same as 12nm AMD, etc. But yes, the industry needs standardized advertising practices badly.

Uh, it's the other way around. 10nm Intel is 7nm global foundries. 22nm Intel is superior to 14nm global foundries. Intel is the one that doesn't fudge their numbers.

For a while I think it was the other way around: Intel's processes were, in practice, actually substantially less dense than their competitors at the same nominal process node size.

Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips

#102

Post by exDM69 » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

beautifulfreak wrote: post #100

awalton wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct at all. Most chips made today are created with multipatterning processes using 193nm lasers and optical masks, known in the field as "Deep Ultraviolet Lithography" (DUV(L)). The industry is pushing towards replacing DUV (which has been pushed to its extremes) with "Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography" (EUV(L)), which uses a 13.5 nm light source (just watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yTARacBxHI -…

He says they hope to do 100 wafers per hour. I wonder how many dies will be on a wafer.

With current technology, a wafer is 10" in diameter (254mm), the aperture size limiting the die size is around 900 mm^2, so a chip is at most about 30x30mm. This would make it about 60-70 chips per wafer at maximum chip size (e.g. high end GPU). Most chips are a lot smaller, but there's a ballpark figure for you.

Chips are square but wafers are round, so there's a lot more wasted area with large chips.

Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips

#103

Post by km3k » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 1:18 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #20

burnte wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's why they do it. The sizes of Intel's 10nm is similar to or slightly smaller than everyone else's 7nm. Compare https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process and https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/10_nm_lithography_process .

Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips

#104

Post by km3k » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 1:20 PM UTC

tfha wrote: post #67

quickben wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, after a while or is sort of public knowledge that 10nm Intel is about the same as 12nm AMD, etc. But yes, the industry needs standardized advertising practices badly.

Uh, it's the other way around. 10nm Intel is 7nm global foundries. 22nm Intel is superior to 14nm global foundries. Intel is the one that doesn't fudge their numbers.

Intel still fudges their numbers. They just fudge their numbers less than everyone else.

Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips

#105

Post by manaxi » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #4

Wow. 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.

> Semiconductor manufacturing improvements like this really have enabled the whole tech world improvements of the last few decades.

I would argue that for software it had the opposite effect, and has led to layers upon layers of crap. No need to ever fix that when you can rely on the next cpu being twice as fast.

Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips

#106

Post by Valmar » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 3:06 PM UTC

km3k wrote: post #104

tfha wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, it's the other way around. 10nm Intel is 7nm global foundries. 22nm Intel is superior to 14nm global foundries. Intel is the one that doesn't fudge their numbers.

Intel still fudges their numbers. They just fudge their numbers less than everyone else.

How so?

The numbers don't seem to have much relation at all with all of the real process node numbers.

Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips

#107

Post by baybal2 » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 3:17 PM UTC

Nanite wrote: post #97

CamperBob2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched the video recommended by awalton, and it's definitely as insane as he says it is. I can't believe a synchrotron would be that much more expensive, considering that a single storage ring can have an arbitrary number of output ports.

The main issue with using a synchrotron or Free Electron Laser EUV source might not be so much about the technology, but more about the mindset of the clients (Samsung, TSMC, Global Foundries, Intel). Up until now lithography has been something they would buy as a "box" which would be shipped to their fab, "plugged in" and commissioned. A Free Electron Laser EUV source would be a facility on it's own, similar in size…

And after that, and few EUV multiple patterning litho generation, lies a pitch black abyss called Deep X-Ray Lithography, the only thing that can push things closer to 1nm

Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips

#108

Post by nickik » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 3:32 PM UTC

Great. I hope Esperanto Technology can come out with their RISC-V chip soon.

Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips

#109

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips

#110

Post by hexane360 » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

manaxi wrote: post #105

rb808 wrote: post #4

Wow. 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.

> Semiconductor manufacturing improvements like this really have enabled the whole tech world improvements of the last few decades. I would argue that for software it had the opposite effect, and has led to layers upon layers of crap. No need to ever fix that when you can rely on the next cpu being twice as fast.

Don't forget that optimization also costs time. Performance improvements just shifted the equilibrium between optimization and output. In the world where every programmer was forced to optimize their code, we'd have a lot less code.