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What happens to the manufacturing process when M5 comes around? will it be lower than 3nm at that time. How small can they go and what happens when they reach 1-2nm..where do they go next? just curious
The “3 nm” denomination has little to do with actual physical structure sizes. It’s a marketing term. It’s still a good question how the marketing terms will evolve.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_nm_process: “a 3 nm node is expected to have a contacted gate pitch of 48 nanometers and a tightest metal pitch of 24 nanometers.”
 
What happens to the manufacturing process when M5 comes around? will it be lower than 3nm at that time. How small can they go and what happens when they reach 1-2nm..where do they go next? just curious

Sub-1nm.

While every time the process is shrunk it comes with significant engineering challenges, there's no inherent barrier at the 1 nanometer. For example, the first intel chip was 10 microns. They didn't just get to 1 micron (the 486) and say "we can't go smaller." They went sub 1 micron and started measuring in nanometers instead. It will be interesting to see if they refer to sub nanometer processes by fractions of a nanometer (e.g. 0.8 nm) or shift to referring to them on an Angstrom or Picometer scale instead.

M5 might be an improved 3nm process, a 2nm process, or smaller. If Apple is working on the M5 they likely have a target for what the process size will be since that's a key variable in the processor design process.
 
Sub-1nm.

While every time the process is shrunk it comes with significant engineering challenges, there's no inherent barrier at the 1 nanometer. For example, the first intel chip was 10 microns. They didn't just get to 1 micron (the 486) and say "we can't go smaller." They went sub 1 micron and started measuring in nanometers instead. It will be interesting to see if they refer to sub nanometer processes by fractions of a nanometer (e.g. 0.8 nm) or shift to referring to them on an Angstrom or Picometer scale instead.
Intel at least has already decided on Angstrom, hence their Intel A20, Intel A18, etc. naming.
 
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