TSMC demos its first 2nm chips to Apple, mass production slated for 2025 | Hacker News Reader

TSMC demos its first 2nm chips to Apple, mass production slated for 2025

9to5mac.com

38 pointsCharlesW16 comments

What’s interesting to me is how big the steps in process node sizes are. I thought the 5nm to 3nm step was huge—it’s a 40% reduction! And 3nm to 2nm is similar—a 33% reduction. But then I looked at wikipedia’s list of process node sizes and, well, they’ve all been 30% to 50% over more than five decades. Which is of course Moore’s law, but I figured there would be more, smaller steps.

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

"The term "3 nanometer" has no relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch) of the transistors. According to the projections contained in the 2021 update of the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems published by IEEE Standards Association Industry Connection, a 3 nm node is expected to have a contacted gate pitch of 48 nanometers and a tightest metal pitch of 24 nanometers"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_nm_process

Why is it called 3nm then?

It is defined by the smallest physical feature on the transistor - regardless of what that feature is.

It used to be defined by the size of gate iirc - that is why people say it has no relation to the physical features.

super interesting info thanks. i was still on the gate size club :/

We're blowing right past the 3.14nm step

How much of moore's law has simply been foundries just choosing to make smaller steps to secure a nice roadmap of product offerings? Have any significant changes been made to EUVL that prevented them from making 2nm chips a decade ago? Or were the learnings along the way what got them here.

I remember when big names in semi industry were laughing on the floor when asked about the possibility of sub 10nm ICs.

And now I wonder what kind of physics will be investigated for sub nanometer electronics .. spin ? neutronics ? photonics ?

Are these chips actually what was being envisioned when folks were talking about sub 10nm back then in terms of the real feature sizes and performance?

There's very important race in chips industry happening right now and is expected to end in 2025

Will US retake semico node leadership or TSMC will continue to be #1?

> Will US retake semico node leadership or TSMC will continue to be #1?

Who is even remotely nipping at TSMC's heels at their scale?

Samsung/Qualcomm

Samsung is Korean and Qualcomm is fabless

Intel aims to.

I think the US will not retake semico node leadership.

Expected to end in 2025? Why would it "end"?

And what is Node Leadership? And how to you define Number 1? By Tech, by volume, by revenue or by profits?

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