What’s harder to find than microchips? The equipment that makes them

Re:What’s harder to find than microchips? The equipment that... by marcan_42 on Sunday November 07, 2021 @01:45AM (#29136872)

Not only that; you can't do 5nm power management chips. At 5nm the highest voltage you can handle on your I/O is 1.2V or perhaps 1.8V. You can't even make USB transceivers on that process, which is why the Apple Silicon macs use external USB level translation chips!

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Re:What’s harder to find than microchips? The equipment that... by gautamcgoel on Sunday November 07, 2021 @03:11AM (#29137432)

Can you expand on this? Why can't 5nm chips handle higher voltages?

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Re:What’s harder to find than microchips? The equipment that... by hristov on Sunday November 07, 2021 @03:22AM (#29137471)

If your channel is very very thin, a sufficiently high voltage will cause conduction over it, even when it is not supposed to be conductive.

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Re:What’s harder to find than microchips? The equipment that... by runnerup on Sunday November 07, 2021 @11:34PM (#29146150)

If you can make a "5nm" channel...why can't the machine just make the channel wider?

Like I can use a 1/8" router bit to make a 1/8" wide channel, or I can use that same router bit to make a 1" wide channel. I know these machines don't use routers but I don't really understand why they can't create larger features if they can create smaller ones.

I suspect they can.... but maybe its just not cost-effective. Why use a 5nm process to create a 180nm feature-size chip, when you can use a 180nm process for 99% less cost.

If I'm wrong please correct my misconception!

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Re:What’s harder to find than microchips? The equipment that... by marcan_42 on Monday November 08, 2021 @08:18AM (#29148939)

It's not width, it's depth. Things like gate oxide are deposited as a layer through a chemical process. That layer is the same thickness across the entire chip, and it scales down with the node. Gate oxide thickness determines your maximum gate voltage.

Chips aren't 2D structures, they're built out of 3D layers and all those layers have a constant thickness.

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Re:What’s harder to find than microchips? The equipment that... by runnerup on Monday November 08, 2021 @08:44AM (#29149177)

Thanks marcan :) and thanks for all your work towards bringing linux to M1.

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