7nm is effectively twice as dense as the previous 14nm node, which allows companies like AMD to release 64-core server chips, a massive improvement over their previous 32 cores (and Intel’s 28). It also allows for smaller die sizes, which reduces costs and can increase density at the same sizes, and this means more cores per chip. Since smaller transistors are more power-efficient, they can do more calculations without getting too hot, which is usually the limiting factor for CPU performance. The exact method of how this is done is usually referred to as the process node and is measured by how small the manufacturer can make the transistors. What The “nm” Really Means fotografos/ĬPUs are made using photolithography, where an image of the CPU is etched onto a piece of silicon. And with AMD’s next CPUs on TSMC’s 7nm process, this marks a chance for them to jump past Intel in performance, and bring some healthy competition to Intel’s monopoly on the market-at least until Intel’s 10nm “Sunny Cove” chips start hitting shelves. With Intel lagging, even mobile devices have had a chance to catch up, with Apple’s A12X chip being manufactured on TSMC’s 7nm process, and Samsung having their own 10nm process.
These new processes are the first major shrinks in a long time, especially from Intel, and represent a brief rekindling of Moore’s law.
But further shrinking has gotten more complicated, and we haven’t seen a transistor shrink from Intel since 2014. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, transistors shrunk in size by half every two years, leading to massive improvements on a regular schedule. Moore’s Law, an old observation that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every year while the costs are halved, held for a long time but has been slowing down lately. So Why Are These New Processes So Important?
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