My first computer's CPU used a 3 µm process; the next generation of Apple CPU's are rumored to use a 3 nm process.
That's literally 1,000 times smaller. Bonkers.
My first computer's CPU used a 3 µm process; the next generation of Apple CPU's are rumored to use a 3 nm process.
That's literally 1,000 times smaller. Bonkers.
@thomasfuchs 1000x shorter and 1000x narrower : 1,000,000x less 2-dimensional area.
A *million* 3nm transistors would fit in the same wafer area as one of those old 3-micron transistors.
@number137 fwiw there is 1.5TB micro SD cards now
@thomasfuchs my 20 year old self still can't fathom that a breath of wind could whiff 512GB from the table for the doggo to gulp it without serious side effects
@thomasfuchs The more I've learned about processor manufacturing, the more I'm convinced it is likely our biggest accomplishment. Such insane precision at SCALE is just incredible. Really dealing with manufacturing at “near” atom level.
@SloanStudio Yeah, I feel like the public has no clue about what has actually been achieved in the last 30-40 years
@thomasfuchs an ARM cortex m0 fits into two transistors of the 6502. And that was almost ten years ago.
This means A MILLION transistors on the upcoming Apple M3 occupy the same area as ONE transistor on a Intel 8088.
Not even contemplating three dimensions here.
@Smoljaguar Well, it looks like that marketing has also gotten better since the 1980s lol
@thomasfuchs sorry to tell you, but the modern naming convention of processes is no longer a technical term to do with length, and is only a marketing term. See 3rd paragraph of wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_nm_process?wprov=sfla1 . However, it's still several orders of magnitude smaller, so your point isn't undermined much!
@Smoljaguar thanks updated my post
@f4grx just updated my post
@thomasfuchs I dont think that 3m *technology node* uses transistor whose dimensions are 3nm. They are still significantly smaller than 3um.
@thomasfuchs I wire-wrapped two additional banks of eight 4116 chips to give my first machine a full 48kb of RAM. It took a shoebox sized enclosure. Obviously, the density could have been increased somewhat, but …
@angst_ridden these days you can accidentally inhale a few gigabytes
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