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.

Not really standard. Intel is one generation "late" for the same process compared to TSMC.

By TSMC standards, Intel's 7nm is a 5nm process and Intel's 10nm is a 7nm process.

So it is not even industry standard marketing bullshit.

It's a random number in front of physical measurement, unrelated to anything from reality.

Just because all of the marketing departments choose to participate in this particular bs doesn't mean it's not pure marketing bs. That just means it's industry standard marketing bs.

No, it isn't random either but it hasn't been associated with a particular physical feature size since 1997.

How Are Process Nodes Defined?

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/296154-how-are-process...

Your source seems to disagree with you.

> The numbers that we use to signify each new node are just numbers that companies pick.

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.)

Except it isn't an industry standard term unless you mean the marketing industry. And the standard for them is it means whatever we say it means.

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

Same with 4K, prior to it the number was used to describe the height of the screen (480, 720, 1080) but then 4K describes the width which confuses people into thinking it has 4x the resolution of 1080 when it’s really 2160 (double the resolution.)

The challenge there was combining code systems. 4K as a standard had been used for a relatively long time in digital cinema and editing, and I believe the long-dimension standard was chosen based on telecine processes for scanning film for digital editing and effects. Consumer tech wasn't anywhere near those sorts of resolutions for a very long time, and the 480/720/1080 definition was based on TV broadcasts displayed with CRT scanlines. Then consumer display density rose to the point that it became relevant, and 4K was the preexisting professional name for digital displays in that resolution. It's complicated, but I don't think the choice was intended to confuse.

4K is the successor to 2K. It's not deliberately misleading. Every resolution has had several names:

• 480p/480i, SD

• 720p/720i, HD

• 1080p/1080i, full HD, 2K*

• 2160p, ultra HD, 4K*

* actually refers to several resolutions with different aspect ratios, but roughly the same pixel count

Double the linear resolution. 4x the pixels.

HD ~= 1080p ~= 1K. 4 x 1080p ~= 4K.

But 4K isn’t 4x 1080 (as a description of height) it is 2x

Yes they went from counting interlaced vertical lines to progressive lines, to the number of 1080P pixels. The 4 in 4K refers to the number increase in pixel count.

But 4K is 4x the 1080 / FullHD. It's twice as wide, and twice as tall, it's four 1080 screens glued together.

But definitely there is nothing 4000 about it, it's 3840 by 2160, about 8.3 megapixels.

Both powers of 1000 and 1024 are common in computing depending on the context (no it is not just a hard drive thing). Surely it is only reasonable that the non-SI quantities get their own prefix to distinguish them from the SI quantities?

I see consumer confusion as based on our ability to guess whether there's going to be a mismatch between communication and understanding, and despite technical correctness. Admittedly that example is pretty marginal, so I added a better one.

I'm confused - the whole point of this paper appears to be reporting a gate composed of a 2D monolayer of atoms as opposed to a 3D bulk deposition. So it seems like it is "there" in the sense you mean?

>Very interested what marketing department will say after 1nm became old news

0.8nm. Something TSMC stated they intend to bring to market by 2030.

Yes it is marketing term. But I thought everyone should know that by now.

Picometers await.

But past 500 pm, the distance between silicon atoms in the crystal lattice, it will become increasingly harder to ascribe any physical sense to it at all.

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

we all know this, we see this comment daily.

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

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