I struggle to follow along with this. I understand Moore's law, but at what point can we just keep using 7nm for most things instead of always moving down an integer 3>7. How many things will require a 2nm and not be satisfied by a 7nm fab?

The issue is you can make this claim anywhere over the past 50 years. When you just achieve a new node, you think it isn't yet useful. But what happens is that software starts to take advantage of it and it gives you new types of capabilities you didn't have before.

For example, if we never got down to where we are now, we likely wouldn't have LLMs or viable real-time ray tracing or the ability to run various types of photo improvement algorithms on your iPhone to make all your pics look good. Those require significant processing and it wouldn't have been achievable if technology here just stopped a decade ago.

If we had stopped CPU progress 25 years ago we would have never gotten smart phones at all.

It is hard to know what will be possible in a decade with all the additional compute resources we get from moving down more nodes. But I do expect there to be a lot.

Depends how you count. Per design we already use >7nm for way more things because older processes are cheaper. But per $ (and perhaps also in volume) the leading-edge processes get the lions share.

Consider however that 7 nm (TSMC N7, Intel 10ESF/Intel 7, Samsung 8/7 nm) is universally a DUV (193 nm light) process using multipatterning. The nodes below are universally EUV. That's a step-change in complexity. If "The West" manages to contain EUV to friendly countries, then it doesn't seem unlikely to me at all that Chinese semiconductors will run into the EUV wall and get stuck for a significant amount of time trying to get over it.

Yes, but it is likely China can over come it. China has lots of educated people and as close to infinite resources as you can get on this planet. So it is just a matter of focus.

Blockading a small country that doesn't have a lot of resources can be very effective, even long-term, look at Cuba or Gaza Strip, but blockading China just slows them down temporarily until they overcome this challenge.

The main issue China has is just that they have a population decline problem which will continue to get worse over the next 50 years. That to me is the only thing that truly threatens China long-term and will sap its innovation and productivity.

> The main issue China has is just that they have a population decline problem which will continue to get worse over the next 50 years.

It can be (and likely will be - just see at corresponding market figures) mitigated by ubiquitous automation and robotics.

They also have over a billion people total. The top percentiles of the rural population are likely not tapped out yet.

> The main issue China has is just that they have a population decline problem which will continue to get worse over the next 50 years

cough Industrial Revolution cough Black Death cough

Why is China still struggling to build reliable, top-tier aircraft engines? Isn’t relatively non-exotic metallurgy fairly rudimentary technology compared to cutting edge semiconductor fabrication?

Because they can buy western-made aircraft engines for a fraction of the price it would cost to develop one domestically.

Won't errors due to cosmic rays be an increasing issue at these process sizes?