14nm and 7nm are NOT what you think it is - Visiting Tescan Part 3/3
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as visual evidence that nm node names are marketing labels and for its neat electron microscope comparison.
What it is
Der8auer visits Tescan and uses an electron microscope to compare real transistor sizes on Intel 14nm and AMD 7nm chips. It shows that process node names do not match physical measurements.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2020 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Recommends datagram · 2021-04 · on “Intel 3rd gen Xeon Scalable (Ice Lake): generationally big, competitively small”
Like others have said, the numbers aren't comparable between manufacturers. Here's a neat video where they use an electron microscope to actually compare the transistor sizes for Intel 14nm and AMD 7nm: [this video]
Cites quag · 2020-09 · on “TSMC to Mass Produce Breakthrough 2nm Mbcfet Transistors in 2024”
According to this video using an electron scanning microscope on amd and Intel chips, the “7nm” or “10nm” number does not measure anything, and is effectively a process version number for marketing. From memory there is no single number for measuring transistors or efficiency, transistor density is useful, but it doesn’t tell you the performance or power usage. [this video]
Cites rasz · 2020-09 · on “TSMC to Mass Produce Breakthrough 2nm Mbcfet Transistors in 2024”
der8auer "14nm and 7nm are NOT what you think it is - Visiting Tescan" [this video] for reference "TESCAN is a leading global producer and supplier of scanning electron microscopes, focused ion beam scanning electron microscopes and micro-CT solutions."
Cites ece · 2021-03 · on “Pulling Bits from ROM Silicon Die Images: Unknown Architecture”
This reminds me of seeing a part of the chip from a scanning electron microscope: [this video] But I wonder how successful these methods are are extracting keys from a TPM or other hardware keys.