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HoboHash t1_ixgd0ek wrote

I thought silicon atom is around 2nm??

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Admirable_Royal_5119 t1_ixgh0w8 wrote

2nm is not length of the transistor. They stopped using the actual dimensions when referring nm long time ago. Here 2nm means 1.5x faster than 3nm chips

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kagoolx t1_ixgr8xe wrote

Oh man that’s disappointing. So not only are they not preparing for these chips here, but we no longer have a meaningful measure. Do you think this 1nm truly will scale performance wise as though it was actually 1nm?

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Admirable_Royal_5119 t1_ixgtdq1 wrote

I'm no expert in this field from what i know, Smaller transistor is not always be better. When you shrink transistor smaller and smaller electrons will start jumping from nodes spontaneously due to quantum tunneling thus increasing the computational error. These 1nm will not have the same power efficient of actual 1nm chips but you can increase the performance by optimising layout architecture etc. It depends on the company making it, for example Intel 10nm outperforms some 7nm amd chips

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Exist50 t1_ixik2up wrote

No, doesn't mean that either. If anything, Dennard scaling died earliest.

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MoroseDelight t1_ixghgct wrote

Silicon atoms are 0.21 nm across.

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csrak t1_ixgjkm1 wrote

That's the bond length between silicon atoms in a crystal, the theoretical thickness of a single layer of silicon atoms is about 0.14 nm.

But real thickness depends on the stacking layers and is kind of arbitrary at this scale.

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adamcmorrison t1_ixgdfvq wrote

Oh shit that solves it. I guess their ambition to build 1nm and this article are just a joke. April fools.

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HoboHash t1_ixgdm7y wrote

Lmao? Its 0.2nm not 2nm. My bad haha

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Substantial_Boiler t1_ixghlf6 wrote

nm is now a marketing name, like a "version" with different associated features

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ArQ7777 t1_iy5mz6f wrote

Still TSMC can only call it 1nm when it is actually 1.9nm.

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