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Re:Fifty or Sixty Years of Processor Development for This? by slx26 on Wednesday April 04, 2018 @07:01AM (#16753616)
Anyway, around 5nm you start to have quantum tunneling effects. Current technology can't be scaled down much further. You can keep optimizing things, but you are still near the technology limits and increasing complexity.
Re:Fifty or Sixty Years of Processor Development for This? by Tuna-Fish on Wednesday April 04, 2018 @07:53AM (#16753844)
Even though the numbers in process node names keep going down, this no longer directly corresponds to line widths. For example, the largest difference between TSMC 20nm and 16nm is that the way the transistor is built was completely changed.

There are a couple of transitions like this left that buy real performance and density, even if the actual line widths stay as they are, so there likely will be a "3nm" process node. After that, who knows.

Re:Fifty or Sixty Years of Processor Development for This? by slx26 on Wednesday April 04, 2018 @12:07PM (#16756055)
Agree it might be possible, but still, my point is that gains become smaller and smaller, more and more complex, and you still don't end up with transistors an order of magnitude smaller.