* How are CPUs made?
* Who are the big players / future big players in the industry.
* Why is 3nm better than 14nm?
* What happens after you can’t go smaller e.g. 1nm, 0.5 nm, 0.25 nm, where is the end and what happens afterward?
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1. CPU are made in a fab using photolithography. Its likely tge most technically complex thing humans have ever accomplished so I’m not going to even attempt to describe every step. Fundamentally though the transistors and interconnects are 3-D printed onto a water of silicon.
2. Amd and Intel are the two big players in the PC marker. ARM is the only big player in mobile although ARM both designs and licenses its ISA (instruction set architecture) so a company like Apple can design its own chips using ARM instruction set. There’s some other players to in devices of reduced complexity.
3. 3nm is better simply because it’s smaller. That means you can pack more transistors onto a smaller area and with less energy demand per transistor.
4. Nobody knows what happens after we reach the end of shrinking transistors. Lots of companies are looking into many exotic new technologies, but none is anywhere close to market ready.
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