What changed to enable this?
I was told a decade ago by my professor that chip makers were facing an issue with electrons jumping across these tiny circuits, and couldn't go much smaller. I'm continuously surprised.
I was told a decade ago by my professor that chip makers were facing an issue with electrons jumping across these tiny circuits, and couldn't go much smaller. I'm continuously surprised.
But that's not really what is happening here. The first thing is that those are feature size, not the size of the dopant region. They are like the size of the pixels on a screen, where the transistors get drawn. The second thing is that this limit is for silicon crystals, and top of line chips are now built in 3D with mixed materials, so you can have an entire crystal that is smaller (at least in one dimension) than that limit.