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1nm Breakthrough: TSMC, MIT and NTU Published on Nature

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Re: 1nm Breakthrough: TSMC, MIT and NTU Published on Nature

#11

Post by CalChris »

out_of_protocol wrote: post #6

That "1nm" is complete marketing bullshit, like it always was, for a decade or two. Silicon lattice step is ~0.5nm, so 1nm is at most 3 atoms. Current technology is definitely not there yet however we're getting closer. Very interested what marketing department will say after 1nm became old news

  The term "5 nanometer" has no relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch) of the transistors. It is a commercial or marketing term used by the chip fabrication industry to refer to a new, improved generation of silicon semiconductor chips in terms of increased transistor density, increased speed and reduced power consumption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process

It is an industry standard term for describing a process node which is quite different from marketing bullshit.

Re: 1nm Breakthrough: TSMC, MIT and NTU Published on Nature

#12

Post by ChuckMcM »

Challenging to read things that are auto-translated from Chinese into English.

From what I gather from the article, didn't get the Nature paper yet, the novelty here is a bismuth deposition process that doesn't damage fine structures underneath it.

This is definitely one of the hard problems in semiconductor manufacturing and as stated, it is implied it allows for very fine lines (1 nm) for connecting elements on a chip. If they can do that in a commercial fab it would help with density, if they are really able to reduce connection resistance to "negligible amounts" then that would be really good for power dissipation.

Re: 1nm Breakthrough: TSMC, MIT and NTU Published on Nature

#13

Post by tasty_freeze »

trhway wrote: post #3

i don't believe in physical limits for computation since beginning of 90ties when i read about 50MHz being the fundamental impossible to surpass limit and few years later i had DX4-133 running at home. Saying that with high appreciation for the grit of the people in the industry who has taken us that far and going to take even farther.

> when i read about 50MHz being the fundamental impossible to surpass limit

Where did you read that? As a working EE through the 80s and until today, I never heard that claimed. Maybe someone, somewhere wrote that, but it would have been an extremely fringe opinion. Even at the time I think most people would have received that opinion as a crock of shit.

Re: 1nm Breakthrough: TSMC, MIT and NTU Published on Nature

#14

Post by alokv28 »

out_of_protocol wrote: post #6

That "1nm" is complete marketing bullshit, like it always was, for a decade or two. Silicon lattice step is ~0.5nm, so 1nm is at most 3 atoms. Current technology is definitely not there yet however we're getting closer. Very interested what marketing department will say after 1nm became old news

Labels for production nodes (e.g. "1nm") have diverged from specific physical distances (e.g. gate width) for years now.

Re: 1nm Breakthrough: TSMC, MIT and NTU Published on Nature

#15

Post by [deleted] »

Empf wrote: post #7
out_of_protocol wrote: post #6

That "1nm" is complete marketing bullshit, like it always was, for a decade or two. Silicon lattice step is ~0.5nm, so 1nm is at most 3 atoms. Current technology is definitely not there yet however we're getting closer. Very interested what marketing department will say after 1nm became old news

In a LSD trip someone could wonder if our simulation has no idea what the next evolutionary step is. Similar how music did not change much in the last 20 years

[deleted]

Re: 1nm Breakthrough: TSMC, MIT and NTU Published on Nature

#16

Post by trhway »

zsmi wrote: post #10
trhway wrote: post #3

i don't believe in physical limits for computation since beginning of 90ties when i read about 50MHz being the fundamental impossible to surpass limit and few years later i had DX4-133 running at home. Saying that with high appreciation for the grit of the people in the industry who has taken us that far and going to take even farther.

> beginning of 90ties when i read about 50MHz being the fundamental impossible to surpass limit Do you remember what magazine that was in? It's hard to imagine anyone thinking 50MHz was a fundamental limit to circuit design, or computers, in the 90s. I am very curious what their argument was. The Cray-1 ran 80MHz in the 70s. http://www.openloop.com/education/classes/sjsu_engr/engr_com... FM is faster than that and it…

it was in USSR, so there would have been natural delay in the stuff getting printed there, and also it may have been end of 80-ties. My point here isn't about specific numbers and dates, it is that relatively short period between me reading about the limit and experiencing it getting broken left me with big doubts about the limits, and made me thinking about them more as the limits of our world view and less as real physical limits. Similar like "c" happens to be a speed limit only in the fixed spacetime.

Re: 1nm Breakthrough: TSMC, MIT and NTU Published on Nature

#17

Post by threatofrain »

CalChris wrote: post #11
out_of_protocol wrote: post #6

That "1nm" is complete marketing bullshit, like it always was, for a decade or two. Silicon lattice step is ~0.5nm, so 1nm is at most 3 atoms. Current technology is definitely not there yet however we're getting closer. Very interested what marketing department will say after 1nm became old news

The term "5 nanometer" has no relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch) of the transistors. It is a commercial or marketing term used by the chip fabrication industry to refer to a new, improved generation of silicon semiconductor chips in terms of increased transistor density, increased speed and reduced power consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process It i…

IMO GiB and gigabit are deliberately consumer-confusing terms with an even clearer standard definition.

Re: 1nm Breakthrough: TSMC, MIT and NTU Published on Nature

#18

Post by OJFord »

CalChris wrote: post #11
out_of_protocol wrote: post #6

That "1nm" is complete marketing bullshit, like it always was, for a decade or two. Silicon lattice step is ~0.5nm, so 1nm is at most 3 atoms. Current technology is definitely not there yet however we're getting closer. Very interested what marketing department will say after 1nm became old news

The term "5 nanometer" has no relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch) of the transistors. It is a commercial or marketing term used by the chip fabrication industry to refer to a new, improved generation of silicon semiconductor chips in terms of increased transistor density, increased speed and reduced power consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process It i…

It's industry standard to blame anything viewed with disdain on the marketing department, if EEVBlog is anything to go by! ('Product/industrial designers' when it's the same sort of thing but he likes it.)

Re: 1nm Breakthrough: TSMC, MIT and NTU Published on Nature

#19

Post by [deleted] »

out_of_protocol wrote: post #6

That "1nm" is complete marketing bullshit, like it always was, for a decade or two. Silicon lattice step is ~0.5nm, so 1nm is at most 3 atoms. Current technology is definitely not there yet however we're getting closer. Very interested what marketing department will say after 1nm became old news

[deleted]

Re: 1nm Breakthrough: TSMC, MIT and NTU Published on Nature

#20

Post by nomel »

out_of_protocol wrote: post #6

That "1nm" is complete marketing bullshit, like it always was, for a decade or two. Silicon lattice step is ~0.5nm, so 1nm is at most 3 atoms. Current technology is definitely not there yet however we're getting closer. Very interested what marketing department will say after 1nm became old news

I'm curious if two gens from now we'll see -1nm or 250pm.
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