transistor

[zehao39]

I am just wonder how small transistor can go. It is 14nm now. What will be the limited. If we reached the limited is that mean we can not produce more powerful CPU?

[Lurick]

The limit is approximately 7nm but it might and I stress MIGHT be possible to go as low as 5nm on silicon before we need to find a different material. Once we hit the limit we'll either see a new material based CPU or we'll start to see them get thicker, similar to how 3D NAND works where it stacks layer upon layer.

[zehao39]

Just now, Lurick said:

The limit is approximately 7nm but it might and I stress MIGHT be possible to go as low as 5nm on silicon before we need to find a different material. Once we hit the limit we'll either see a new material based CPU or we'll start to see them get thicker, similar to how 3D NAND works where it stacks layer upon layer.

if we change to another base CPU will the price be much higher because the new base cost much more price. And all of these will happen in 5years?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, zehao39 said:

It is 14nm now.

The smallest functional transistor that has ever been made is 4nm. We can not put them in processors yet. (maybe in 2019).

[Lurick]

Just now, zehao39 said:

if we change to another base CPU will the price be much higher because the new base cost much more price. And all of these will happen in 5years?

Right now it's estimated we'll hit this limit within the next few years, so something will have to change within that time and nobody knows how a new material will impact the price. If it can use existing manufacturing methods then it might be negligible but if we have to create whole new fabrication plants then I would expect the price to increase a good bit.

[DXMember]

14nm is not the size of the entire transistor it's the size of the smallest feature

Intel plans to shrink to 10nm next year, maybe, hopefully

they had plans to follow up with 7nm, but they kind of dropped it, instead exploring new materials