this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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How we get to 1 nanometer chips and beyond (research.ibm.com)
submitted 2 days ago by AfterNova@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] urshilikai@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

can we please socially murder the sales/marketing team that rebranded the unit in nodes from something physically meaningful to a random countdown detached from reality? (1nm node does not have any bearing on critical dimension or size of the circuits)

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

To be fair, the industry spent decades measuring a distance, so when they started doing features that had equivalent effects, the easiest way for people to understand was to say something akin to equivalent size.

Of course, then we have things like Intel releasing their "10 nm* process, then after TSMC's 7nm process was doing well and Intel fab hit some bumps, they declared their 10 to be more like a 7 after all.. it's firmly all marketing number..

Problem being no one is suggesting a more objective measure.

[–] certified_expert@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Eli12?

[–] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Open any wikipedia article about "x nm process" and one of the first paragraphs will be something like this:

The term "2 nanometer", or alternatively "20 angstrom" (a term used by Intel), has no relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch) of the transistors. According to the projections contained in the 2021 update of the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a "2.1 nm node range label" is expected to have a contacted gate pitch of 45 nanometers and a tightest metal pitch of 20 nanometers.[1]

It used to be that the "60nm process" was called that because the transistor gate was 60nm.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

The best thing you can do to understand this is watch the latest Veritasium video about ASML.

ASML figured out how to make ultraviolet light very close to X-Ray wavelength using some incredible physics and engineering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0

[–] lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com 1 points 1 day ago

We should call it nm...

Calling it nanometers does not make sense.