For example i notice that the latest chips are 3 nm & below, & over the last decade i’ve seen it shrink little by little. What is it about this process that more money needs to be poured into each die shrink, & why couldn’t we just jump from 90nm to 3nm instead pf 65nm etc etc?
In: Engineering
It is economics, not just technology. What drives shrink is the cost per IC. The investments for this are huge.
Smaller circuits mean more circuits fit on a wafer (the flat disc on which chips are printed). A lot of the cost is per wafer or per die (chip), not per circuit.
A small cost reduction is not enough to offset the huge investments required for a new node.
So whether you shrink by 5% or by 50%, you still need to develop a new process, which is timely and costly. Possibly requiring new machines or a new fab. Customers are not willing to pay enough for a 5% shrink – but when you get to 30% it gets interesting.
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