[cctalk] Re: The size of integrated circuit components

The current scaling numbers are in many ways marketing numbers rather than a reflection of the geometric realities of earlier decades. Early on a single geometry increment would apply more or less to most of the chip. That's no longer true. So to the extent that 2 nm geometry appears at all, it's only in one or a few layers, with most layers having significantly larger geometry. Nevertheless, those numbers are still mindboggling. Especially when you consider the machine (the EUV stepper) that has to project those patterns at that resolution onto the wafer, at high speed. The fact that it's possible at all is just amazing; the fact that only one company in the world is capable of doing it isn't much of a surprise. I saw a video about that technology which said that it's analogous to shooting at a dime on the moon, from earth, and asking "which side of the dime do you want me to hit?" I think that's a slight exaggeration, but hitting WIlilam Tell's apple on the moon, from earth, seems accurate enough. Yowza. The big problem at those tiny geometries is that devices are small enough that quantum mechanics is a major source of trouble. For example, insulators that small aren't really insulators. paul