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Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

TSMC claims breakthrough in the arbitrary naming of process nodes.

“We resolved one of the biggest problems in miniaturizing semiconductor devices, the contact resistance between a metal electrode and a monolayer semiconductor material”

I'm no expert, but that sounds significant.

The real breakthrough would be figuring out what to name the line after the "1nm". They've backed themselves into a corner, running out of odd numbers.

Not too long ago, process nodes were discussed at μm scale. Extrapolating from the past, I think there's a fairly straightforward way [0] to come up with names for the next few increments.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix#List_of_SI_prefi...

Or even better, just use angstrom, which is 1/10 of a nanometer. So you go from 1nm to 9Å. Plus it sounds cool and scientific and it's actually not (total) marketing bullshit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angstrom

Why would a change in the unit of length change the marketing practices of the silicone foundries?

It wouldn't, but marketing based on an objective metric is better than inventing metrics or tying them to abstract concepts like a carbon tax (a carbon tax is a banker's solution to global warming, ie how can we profit from it).

The (total) qualifier was just because I realize node sizes are measured slightly different depending on the foundry, ie TSMC and Intel mean different things when they say 10nm.

I invented the first 0nm process. I am gonna mint an NFT and sell it for the value of $21m BTC... :D

Perhaps one of the following, seeing as the naming scheme is pretty arbitrary at this point?

1nm, 500um, 350um, 250um, 180um, 130um, 100um, 90um ...

1nm, 0.7nm, 0.5nm, 0.3nm, 0.2nm, 0.1nm, 0.07nm, 0.05nm ...

1nm, 1/2nm, 1/3nm, 1/5nm, 1/7nm, 1/10nm, 1/14nm ...

1nm, 0nm, -1nm, -3nm, -5nm, -7nm, -10nm, -14nm ...

1nm, 1b nm, 1a nm, 1g nm, 1n nm, 1ac nm, 1ax nm ...

1nm, 360nm, one nm, one x nm, series x nm ...

I was about to say “negative doesn’t make sense” but I guess that’s exactly your point: it’s no more or less nonsense than “1nm” feature size. Might as well try names of large cats or Californian locales.

I can see it now.

"TSMC Claims Breakthrough on Cougar Production"

Sub micron processes were just called 0.x um. Why not do that for nm? Another fine option would be to change the unit to Angstroms. That would likely be the last unit change though.

picometers is the next unit down.

There are an infinite amount of numbers between 1 and 0.

Or they could go to picometers and femtometers giving another 6 orders of magnitude.

> They've backed themselves into a corner, running out of odd numbers.

Nah, next odd number smaller than 1nm is simply -1nm lithography.

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