Why computer chips nanometers progress is gradual? Why can not the technology bump up to the lowest nm possible immediately since the concept and mechanisms of it is already known and studied
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Its a lot easier to fix one problem at a time than 10 problems at the same time
You get up in the morning and your car won’t start. You run through the quick checklist. Fuel in the tank? Yup. Key in the ignition? Yup. Battery charged? Nope
So you jump the battery and the car starts and you’re off
This is what happens when they slowly go through the process nodes. Each node has a new quirk that needs to be identified, triaged, and fixed and once that’s done they can start getting product
Its a lot harder if your car just went through a wild science experiment and won’t start. If your battery is dead, ignition switch is broken, fuel pump is missing, and spark plugs are bad its going to be a whole lot harder to troubleshoot that car and get it going since you have to identify and fix *all* problems before you get *any* results
It doesn’t make business sense to go from 90% yield and then hop to a node with 2% yield that slowly ramps up to 90% over the next decade. Take a sequence of small steps that each have a small step rather than a giant leap that either works or utterly bankrupts the company
There’s a false premise in your question. We certainly know in theory that shorter wavelengths of light allow for smaller features, but the technology to generate extreme UV did not exist and needed to be developed. Right now there’s only one company in the world that knows how to do it
Have you ever made or constructed anything?
Like every tech, the concept is “we can just win every golf trophy by doing every hole in one shot”
But then you shoot and miss and you realize you forgot the wind, the grass type and so on.
Most technologies are not about getting from A to B, but going from A to B without stepping on some dog poo.
For example, at this level a spec of dust can totally destroy your chip or even your machinery. So you may start your journey thinking about chips and now you have a department that develops vacuum machinery, another department developing air cleaners that stop nano dust, and another developing optical lenses… and your final product is only as good as your “side quest score”. And every side quest opens new side quests.
Because what is possible isn’t known until someone tries it. If you invest a ton of money to make the equipment and materials to make a 0.01nm chip and fail, you’re out a lot of money and time, which puts you well behind your competitors.