Think of them as relative indications of feature size and of spacing between identical parts (arrays if you want to use a software analogy), so even if an actual transistor will not be 10 nm or 14 nm their relative sizes will relate on one axis as 10 nm to 14 nm. Keeping the numbers from a single manufacturer will definitely aid in the comparison.

There is a ton of black magic going on here with layers being stacked vertically and masks not having any obvious visual resemblance to the shape they project on the silicon because of the interaction between the photons / xrays and the masks due to the fact that the required resulting image is small relative to the wavelength of the particles used to project it.

There is a super interesting youtube video floating around about this that I highly recommend, it's called 'indistinguishable from magic':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4

It's up to date to 22 nm. Highly recommended.

Here is the talk a few years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL-I3-C-KBk

I've seen that video several times now and it just doesn't cease to amaze me.

It's really a must-see for anyone interested in processor technology.

Oh!, there's a new video! awesome!

If you think that lithography is challenging, your brain is going to invert looking at the litho technology for 7nm and onwards :)

Yeah, 7nm doesn't mean anything now. Refer to them effectively as product names. Intel is really no better.

The "7nm/10nm" transistor fin pitches are something like ~50 n, and the length is something like 100-150nm

I don't have any direct experience with "deep submicron" stuff, but from what I've read you basically can't trust these numbers to be comparable. The various sizes/spacings don't scale together the way they did for larger feature sizes, so you could have e.g. a "14nm" process where the area of an SRAM cell, NAND gate etc. ends up the same size as another foundry's "20nm" process even though the actual transistors are smaller.

Intel's are actual measurements. TSMC, GF, and samsung are all marketing bs.

They're all marketing, Intel is no exception. At 40nm and over, the Intel node names were larger than the industry average, now it's the other way around.