[undersuit]

>Will we have 1-3nm transistors? Yes. Will they be commercially viable? Probably No.

Why not? We can only stack our layers so much, eventually the 1-3nm range of transistors will become useful to give technology another squeeze before having to learn how to layer a bizarre number of layers.

[microcolonel]

28nm is still more expensive today than 40nm ever was, twice as expensive, per wafer, as 40nm currently is. The size of the elements is still somewhat decreasing, but the price per transistor is actually increasing at this point.

[kurthr]

Although there is hope that EUV will help control design rules, the current expectation for developing a 10nm design is in the $200M range. It's expected to double at 7nm and again at 5nm. Try amortizing that over anything but an iPhone, Samsung, or PC volumes.

[undersuit]

I'm just arguing that lacking an alternative to silicon transistors, we'll hit limits in die stacking and architecture optimizations that will make < 3nm lucrative for some applications.