I am referring to the 10nm, 7nm and 5nm manufacturing processes used by Intel and TSMC, where TSMC is offering 5nm what ever that means.
I don’t understand semiconductor manufacturing, however searching and reading through some pages, it seems to indicate the chip density. I would love to understand what that means.
Also, why does it matter iff we are able to pack more chips into a small area? The CPU and chips are already quite small, so I cannot imagine a smart phone benefitting from it. Also doesn’t more chips in a smaller area mean more heat dissipation?
In: Engineering
The smaller the number, the smaller the transistor (the basic unit of which computers are made). The smaller the transistor, the more you can pack into a given area, and thus the more computing power.
Also smaller transistors, which are basically switches in this context, can flip faster and with less power, meaning less heat per computation and higher clock speeds.
Lastly, smaller transistors mean a smaller circuit. Smaller circuits mean less wait time for signals to travel between transistors and yet higher speeds.
Win/win/win, that’s why the number is so important.
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