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14nm and 7nm are NOT what you think it is - Visiting Tescan Part 3/3

der8auer

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  • Recommended by 2 people: 1 on Hacker News and 1 on Lobsters.
  • Presented by Roman Hartung, hardware enthusiast

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

296K views6 years ago2 recommendations

HardwareCPUs and computer architectureElectronics

Roman Hartung visits Tescan to measure real transistor sizes on Intel 14nm and AMD 7nm chips using an electron microscope.

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Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a fascinating visual demonstration showing that semiconductor process node names do not match physical measurements.

inactive-useron Lobsters • Recommends

14nm and 7nm are NOT what you think it is
9View on Lobsters

datagramon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Intel 3rd gen Xeon Scalable (Ice Lake): generationally big, competitively small”

Like others have said, the numbers aren't comparable between manufacturers. Here's a neat video where they use an electron microscope to actually compare the transistor sizes for Intel 14nm and AMD 7nm: link to this video
View on Hacker News

quagon Hacker News • Mentions

On “TSMC to Mass Produce Breakthrough 2nm Mbcfet Transistors in 2024”

According to this video using an electron scanning microscope on amd and Intel chips, the “7nm” or “10nm” number does not measure anything, and is effectively a process version number for marketing. From memory there is no single number for measuring transistors or efficiency, transistor density is useful, but it doesn’t tell you the performance or power usage. link to this video
View on Hacker News

raszon Hacker News • Mentions

On “TSMC to Mass Produce Breakthrough 2nm Mbcfet Transistors in 2024”

der8auer "14nm and 7nm are NOT what you think it is - Visiting Tescan" link to this video for reference "TESCAN is a leading global producer and supplier of scanning electron microscopes, focused ion beam scanning electron microscopes and micro-CT solutions."
View on Hacker News

eceon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Pulling Bits from ROM Silicon Die Images: Unknown Architecture”

This reminds me of seeing a part of the chip from a scanning electron microscope: link to this video But I wonder how successful these methods are are extracting keys from a TPM or other hardware keys.
View on Hacker News