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> Today, the node names are little more than marketing terms. 'The node designation is becoming more misleading and meaningless," said Samuel Wang, an analyst at Gartner. "For example, at 5nm or 3nm, there is no single geometry that is actually 5nm or 3nm."

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Why is this not considered misleading and regulated?

This is considered misleading. But why would it be regulated? Nobody buys a chip based on the advertised feature size. They buy on power use, MIPS, number of cores, and cost.

So what is 5nm or 3nm?

It has about the same meaning as the 5 or 3 in "core i5" or "core i3". It's all marketing.

The process marketed as 5nm has roughly twice the density as the process marketed as 7nm and so on up and down the line; that's how they justify it.

How can they double the density without decreasing the feature size?

I am wildly speculating here, but maybe going 3rd dimension?

The feature side usually does decrease every generation; it's just that the feature size for, say, a "7nm" process is not exactly 7nm.

The power of recursive reasoning. Induction tells us that Intel's 10nm process probably wasn't 10nm features...

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