As its getting more difficult to make transistors small, it's a blessing AMD went with chiplet designs and gave us ZEN. It will be interesting to see what they will come up with after 7 and 5 nm because of physical limitations.

Silva:

As its getting more difficult to make transistors small, it's a blessing AMD went with chiplet designs and gave us ZEN. It will be interesting to see what they will come up with after 7 and 5 nm because of physical limitations.

It does seem that it's getting harder to shrink the dies, but we've been seeing this "how will they shrink it any further?" question every time it comes to another die shrink. Someone will invent a new process, if there's enough money to be made, it will be done.

Silva:

As its getting more difficult to make transistors small, it's a blessing AMD went with chiplet designs and gave us ZEN. It will be interesting to see what they will come up with after 7 and 5 nm because of physical limitations.

The physical limitations are not close as of yet. The reason is that transistors went 3d when they moved to field-effect transistors (FinFET). To say more plainly the actual features are not 5nm or at least very few of them are. I'm pretty certain the cost of node shrinks will eventually be the death nail not physics. TSMC is spending a projected 23 billion on the 3nm node. The 3nm node is is the big full node shrink. The 6nm and 5nm nodes are simply tweaks to 7nm. The transistors will move from finfet to a gate all around approach. We will see a huge jump in densities on this node. All sorts of things will become possible like super powerful APU's (CPU + GPU) that have memory included on die that can game easily at 4k.

I am extremely impressed with TSMC's advanced process nodes--sort of blew me away, really. We heard so much about the "difficulty" of 7nm production (in hindsight, "information" likely supplied by Intel without the needed disclosure) that to see TSMC hit first for AMD with 7nm was sort of a "what's the catch?" moment! There was/is none! So now TSMC is definitely going to be believed/trusted for 5nm claims...! Meanwhile Intel is going to have shoot for 7nm production late this year but probably not until 2021--at which time TSMC/AMD will be on 5nm--and possibly--3nm(?) by the end of 2021! What I like about the new AMD so much is the fact that they aren't going to be sitting still so as to allow Intel time to catch its breath and catch up or even surpass them. AMD is going to be a moving target from now on and Intel will have its work cut out for it!

waltc3:

I am extremely impressed with TSMC's advanced process nodes--sort of blew me away, really. We heard so much about the "difficulty" of 7nm production (in hindsight, "information" likely supplied by Intel without the needed disclosure) that to see TSMC hit first for AMD with 7nm was sort of a "what's the catch?" moment! There was/is none! So now TSMC is definitely going to be believed/trusted for 5nm claims...! Meanwhile Intel is going to have shoot for 7nm production late this year but probably not until 2021--at which time TSMC/AMD will be on 5nm--and possibly--3nm(?) by the end of 2021! What I like about the new AMD so much is the fact that they aren't going to be sitting still so as to allow Intel time to catch its breath and catch up or even surpass them. AMD is going to be a moving target from now on and Intel will have its work cut out for it!

To be fair, TSMC 7nm is around the density of Intel 10nm (don't quote me on that). What I mean is, the number is just a marketing term, as every foundry tech "measures" differently. The "features" on each transistor vary depending on what tech is used so its not really easy to compare X, Y and Z. That said, 7nm is way better than ++++++++++++++++++++14nm....

Silva:

To be fair, TSMC 7nm is around the density of Intel 10nm (don't quote me on that). What I mean is, the number is just a marketing term, as every foundry tech "measures" differently. The "features" on each transistor vary depending on what tech is used so its not really easy to compare X, Y and Z. That said, 7nm is way better than ++++++++++++++++++++14nm....

Yeah, Intel's 7nm is basically equivalent to TSMC's 5nm - Walt already knows this though because he constantly says it's not and every time I correct him but he's like some kind of robot and doesn't read responses and still posts incorrect information for whatever reason. https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-manufacturers/intel/280236-bob-swan-says-intel-7nm-equals-tsmc-5nm/

Just amazes me how fast this technology evolves, I guess the switch to graphene will be in this decade.

Silva:

As its getting more difficult to make transistors small, it's a blessing AMD went with chiplet designs and gave us ZEN. It will be interesting to see what they will come up with after 7 and 5 nm because of physical limitations.

A stack of chiplets ? They got X3D in their roadmap.

RED.Misfit:

A stack of chiplets ? They got X3D in their roadmap.

I highly suspect in 4 years we will see an APU with a CPU chiplet, GPU chiplet, and an IO die with 32-64GB of HBM2e stacked on top of the IO die. Something similar at least. Both Intel and AMD have the writing on the wall with all there 3d stacking efforts, various chiplet approaches, and Intel trying to get serious with GPU's. Most of us won't buy graphics cards after 2025. I know everyone thinks I'm crazy by saying that.

It doesn't seem that long ago that reports were 5nm production had too many errors. And now we're here.