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Comment by JohnJamesRambo | Hacker News Reader

What will we do below 3 nm?

Carbon nanotubes, graphene, photonic chips, more involved silicon designs.

There's no shortage of ideas, just uncertain ROIs.

The 7-5nm was said to be so much a barrier before. I'm sure this will unleash a ton of capital and brains to keep digging.

ps: I heard spintronics and neutronics caught some wind on paper

There is a new exciting paper about DNA computers as well.

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/leap-forward-for-molecul...

Hah, Woods of course. Two years ago a previous colleague of him hosted a talk in Paris. I got a peek of the work it was truly staggering. But the guy told me they were too instable at scale so far. Sounds like a solid hint at the future though.

ps: do you work in this field ?

Not at all, just an interested layperson (I'm in 'normal' IT). My partner studies evolutionary genetics (or something like that), so we talk frequently about biology. There is another DNA computing paper that was very interesting published earlier this year by another group, but I can't find it now. I think it was in Nature.

Actually spintronics unlike others is ready to come to mainstream, through MRAM.

Presumably 2 nm.

How many silicon atoms is that?

A silicon atom is 0.2nm.

The funny thing is, it doesn't matter. "2nm" is just marketing; nothing about it is actually 2nm in size. But that's okay, because that was true at 7nm and 14nm and even at 28nm.

So what 2nm really means is "better than 3nm".

Why do we all go along with this charade? It’s so silly and unscientific. Why can’t we just call the things correctly?

It is the same reason why we use millimeters of steel as a measurement of the armor performance of tanks even though they use composites of different materials.

Because it is easier to compare two numbers even if they are meaningless in reality.

It would be better to stay quiet instead of comparing things incorrectly.

there is no correct single number to use

SRAM density is a pretty good single meaningful number

Isn't the smallest trace/spacing 2nm? Most is larger but 2nm is possible for some traces/spaces.

As many as you want.

Nothing, we will stay at 3 nm.

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