Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Still all these baby steps. Why do they bother with all these in between numbers? Why not just go straight to, say, 0.9nm or 0.5nm instead of mucking around with 1.2nm? They know it'll be coming in a few years anyway, why wait?
 
We found a way to inscribe data onto the face of individual leptons and quarks so pretty soon, 5 picometer chips!
 
TSMC probably has these nm's ready far in advance, they just release them incrementally to keep the sales going. Kind of like the diamond industry. I see right through this scheme.
 
Still all these baby steps. Why do they bother with all these in between numbers? Why not just go straight to, say, 0.9nm or 0.5nm instead of mucking around with 1.2nm? They know it'll be coming in a few years anyway, why wait?
They are not baby steps. Going from 3nm to 2nm is a 33% improvement. So that is the same as going from 300nm to 200nm in one step.
 
  • iPhone XR and XS (2018): A12 Bionic (7nm, N7)
  • iPhone 11 lineup (2019): A13 Bionic (7nm, N7P)
  • iPhone 12 lineup (2020): A14 Bionic (5nm, N5)
  • iPhone 13 Pro (2021): A15 Bionic (5nm, N5P)
  • iPhone 14 Pro (2022): A16 Bionic (4nm, N4P)
  • iPhone 15 Pro (2023): A17 Pro (3nm, N3B)
  • iPhone 16 Pro (2024): "A18" (3nm, N3E)
  • "iPhone 17 Pro" (2025): "A19" (2nm, N2)
  • "iPhone 18 Pro" (2026): "A20" (2nm, N2P)
  • "iPhone 19 Pro" (2027): "A21" (1.4nm, A14)
Pretty much I'm sure 17 Pro will be with N3P, than we will see N2. With yield issues and costs, they won't skip it.
 
Still all these baby steps. Why do they bother with all these in between numbers? Why not just go straight to, say, 0.9nm or 0.5nm instead of mucking around with 1.2nm? They know it'll be coming in a few years anyway, why wait?
You’ve got to look at the math. All of these are reducing the size around 30%. They have to move incrementally as they continue to develop the chips and the fabrication processes to make the chips
 
Still all these baby steps. Why do they bother with all these in between numbers? Why not just go straight to, say, 0.9nm or 0.5nm instead of mucking around with 1.2nm? They know it'll be coming in a few years anyway, why wait?
I'm not sure if this is satire or if you are serious? The manufacturing equipment and techniques for developing these advanced chips takes years or decades to develop. It's not like one day a TSMC engineer wakes up and says, I think I'll create a 10 Ångström chip today. The EUV machines from ASML cost over $150 million a piece and that is for 3 nm. Next generation is $300 million a piece.
 
  • Like
  • Disagree
Reactions: Elusi and iPadified
Who's the marketing genius at TSMC...Let's name our 1.4nm chipset after the A14 used in Apple's iPhone 12 that launched in 2020...WTF?
 
WILL THESE 2NM AND 1.4 NM BE USED FOR PHONES ONLY??
CAUSE THE 3NM GETS DAMN HOT IN A MAC

SO I THINK ITS SAFE TO SAY A 2NM AND A 1.4NM WILL BURN RIGHT UP WITHOUT HEAVY COOLING OR WATER COOLING.
Is your caps lock stuck? Also that has NOTHING to do with cooling, lower process size usually means the other, and due to the new process being more efficient they are able to get more performance at the same WATT output. So if you think for a second about it if they made the processors have the same performance for say the M3 VS the M2 they would be using less power. The chips are just more efficient so doing more work for the same budget.
 
  • Like
Reactions: z4co
A14 confusion? Apple centric site - how many actually knows the generation of SoC they have in their devices and the world does not revolve around Apple. Is Apple better? "M3" sounds like a BMW to me.
 
Who's the marketing genius at TSMC...Let's name our 1.4nm chipset after the A14 used in Apple's iPhone 12 that launched in 2020...WTF?
It's the same naming format, it's the size and then the number for that size.

N2 is the same as A20.

A is for Angstrom that is 0.1 of a nanometre.

Also Apple just says NM size they don't reference TSMC process naming.
 
Still all these baby steps. Why do they bother with all these in between numbers? Why not just go straight to, say, 0.9nm or 0.5nm instead of mucking around with 1.2nm? They know it'll be coming in a few years anyway, why wait?
The "sub nm" labeled transistors are laboratory curiosities that can only be fabricated in microscopic quantities at enormous costs. The equipment to built that stuff in large quantities doesn't exist. Gazillions of dollars per year need to be spent over many years to gradually bring that cost down to something commercially viable. Cash flow limits how many tens or hundreds of Billions the industry can spend per annum. In the mean time, all those gazillions spent on fab equipment research and production make certain intermediate nodes become more affordable.
 
So at the current rate, TSMC will hit "zero" by 2050, and then in the last half of this century will see "negative nanometers".

Seriously, these numbers are just marketing names at this point. Intel had better names. Why can TSMC call these processes things like "stone lake" or "volcano tree"?
 
  • Disagree
Reactions: jdb8167
Yeah I’ll wait for the 2nm. Should I get 17 Pro or wait a year for the better 2nm? But wait another year and have 1.4nm lol
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.