[throw0101a]

So how small are individual components (e.g., transistors) nowadays? Presumably there's a lower limit: once you're a few atoms across, it seems that you can't go any smaller (?).

[ahazred8ta]

Gates are about 30-50 nm wide, even though they're called '3nm' for marketing reasons.

[phkahler]

Metal pitch is 26nm. That means parallel wires can be placed 2 wavelengths apart with 13.5nm light.

[blinding-streak]

As The Register used to call it, these clean-sounding process nodes (15nm, 5nm, 3nm etc) are "marchitecture." Marketing architecture. Reality is much messier.

[penguin_booze]

Like free range chicken.

[kakacik]

You only need to live in reasonable place for that phrase to have a proper meaning, across whole market from cheapest to most expensive.

[denkmoon]

What is 'proper meaning'? Only a single brand of egg in my supermarket is genuinely free range per the definition supplied by our agricultural scientists (CSIRO, Australia) - less than 1500 hens per hectare. "Free range" can mean anything up to 10,000 hens per hectare.

[PearlRiver]

https://beterleven.dierenbescherming.nl/

They have a code in my country that is pretty simple from 1 to 3. The highest tier is 11 chickens per square meter apparently (I do not eat poultry myself).

[whazor]

This is about increasing output per machine via upgrades.

[ranger_danger]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_nm_process

[hinkley]

I still think we should have gone with average gates per square mm as a new yardstick. It would also make sense to the Numbers Go Up people.

[itopaloglu83]

It’s going to be quite funny if they can go below 40nm in gate pitch size, because they’ll need to call it 0nm.

[dogma1138]

They are moving to angstroms, hence 18A for example.

[etyhhgfff]

Another marketing gag could be -1nm

[cyptus]

some gates are only 10-14 nm wide, thats about 50 silicon atoms!