We’ve now reached 2020 and so the certainty that we will always have sufficiently powerful computing hardware for our expanding needs is beginning to look complacent. Since this has been obvious for decades to those in the business, there’s been lots of research into ingenious ways of packing more computing power into machines, for example using multi-core architectures in which a CPU has two or more separate processing units called “cores” – in the hope of postponing the awful day when the silicon chip finally runs out of road.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/11/we-are-approaching-the-limits-of-computer-power-we-need-new-programmers-n-ow

We will announce more details about our N3 technology at our TSMC North America Technology Symposium on April 29

3nm development, and it can be first process where TSMC can fail miserably.

Some problems of Intel

Increasing die size

As Intel being run by greedy investors did not want to invest proper money in 14nm equipment hoping for simple 10nm transition.

So, from max of 136 millions CPUs per quarter they went down.

Pure-play foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) saw its revenues grow by a slight 3.7% in 2019. TSMC reported consolidated revenues hit a record high of NT$1.07 trillion (US$35.7 billion) in 2019. Revenues for December 2019 came to NT$103.31 billion, down 4.2% on month but up 15% from a year earlier. TSMC saw its fourth-quarter revenues amount to NT$317.24 billion, up about 8% sequentially and hitting a record high for the second consecutive quarter.

Things are not bad, but it seems like crypto mining fade played bad thing with TSMC (they had been biggest manufacturer of crypto shite that produced heat in exchange to dollars). As 3.7% only rise while AMD is making huge profits is not normal.

We can see consequence of all this in 1-2 years, as smartphone market fade can be killer blow for both TSMC and Samsung.

TSMC will be sole foundry partner of Apple iPhone chips for 2020. Volume production using 5nm EUV process will kick off by the end of second-quarter 2020. As much as two thirds of TSMC's available 5nm process capacity will be utilized to make the next-generation iPhone chips

Samsung is unable to do complex 7nm EUV in volume

During GTC 2019 in Suzhou, China, NVIDIA's CEO responded to the press that the majority orders of their next-generation 7nm GPU will be handled by TSMC with Samsung only playing a small role than previously reported.

It is interesting as whole chips had been designed with Samsung process in mind, as I understand problems originate in early 2019 and made Nvidia unable to launch new cards as planned already.

Again Intel 10nm Issues

It looks like Intel is not just delaying a single server project, their entire roadmap has just slid significantly.

https://www.semiaccurate.com/2019/12/12/intel-significantly-delays-its-entire-server-roadmap/

Exactly my point Vitaliy. They pickup niche things that will give them.exclusive lead. Cost effectiveness plays a major role in what processes get supported in the commercial realm, but certain players pay high amounts for performance effectiveness in unviable technology. So, if I had 1 nm technology that was ten times more costly than normal tech to make, they would line up to pay 100x the end price.

Anyway, that FPGA had three times the potential over 5Ghz, and it got signed exclusively to military. At the time I think Intel had sold 5Ghz CPU and someone had overclocked something way way past that using liquid nitrogen or something. It wasn't conventional chip technology. And on GHz claims, individual circuit elements maybe doing a lot more than the entire synchronised clocked circuit. The guy I mentioned had some part in his circuit running ar 5Ghz or something way back, but the chip ran at less than 500 MHz, or something like that. The FPGA people were looking at 5ghz FPGA running in a period of 500Mhz FPGA in that period, but that is likely to yield a complex circuit many times less in speed rather than a Pentium 4+. Still sad though.

There are lots of advanced technology out there that didn't gain a lot of traction or more funding because of cost effectiveness, or niche, like saphire chips. Litter left over from the struggle forwards. One that didn't was a form or 100QE OLED like technology, that the military funded, likely for lighting purposes to extend energy reserves. That had been used now commercially for years in consumer. A number of things get initial development and funding from US government before being set free. Of 'scams', OLED eventually turned out over decades and it is still a bit underwhelming with certain deficiencies. I suspect that in chips certain things will turn out in ways neither us or the industry expected. I mean, the way to beat silicon is to go non silicon, and they know how to do that, but people don't want to abandon their expensive equipment and momentum yet. They keep pushing silicon designs uphill instead of investing that money into the alternative. Every memory stick in your computer should also have processing functions, but it is just another option not receiving the attention it should. Present and past experience, is no absolute guide to what can absolute happen in a progressive dynamic situation. The right funding emphasis, and something better pops out. Above I mention an accurate atomic level way of making a 2.5nm circuit using existing lines. Being able to precisely make something is key. So, is such techniques going to lead to sub nanometer circuites one day. Sure it might even be horribly expensive to do that, but if it is the most viable game in town to do that it can thrive. But the question is, can that be applied to make optical components to, with precisions atomic it would be, interesting times ahead of they figure that part out. This becomes meta material optics engineering at that scale. Very exciting potential.

Optical tales, I'm telling optical fact, kept from the commercial market. In my own design proposals, I can see high deficiencies in using optical for conventional design too. So, I put that aside, but there are ways and means to get desirable results in areas. People able to make startrek like free floating holograms might have technology to solve some of the issues and do a good job at it. I've got certain proposals for things which to solve certain issues, but it is a complex mess to miniaturize them down to chip level, but a solution just occured to me. Anyway, just a larger scale optical processor has advantages due to the speed of light and lack of leakage, if you can figure out how to do it properly. But, you don't need a conventional processor to do the animations they were doing.

? I've had an FPGA technology that looked promising for 5Ghz+ around 14 years ago, disapear into military only. This has happened a few more times to me to. I see a technology, and think thank you very much, I can use that, only to find out thar it gets taken by the military. In patenting, they have procedures where if it has certain military use, it is auto diverted to government and defence companies. Metal Storm were famous for slipping past this patent procedure, which makes me wonder how they did that, as I'm pretty sure they were doing cutting edge weapons systems before that, and one of my teachers was an ex Cornel I think used to work there previously.

Existing stabilised rugged radiation hardened, are all reasons to keep using standard tech, but a z80 doesn't have much place being the brains running an aircraft sized auto drone.

And here we have Samsung with their little fantasies

This looks like the one sorry:

http://news.mit.edu/2018/smallest-3-d-transistor-1207

It just reuses vapour deposition process. The 2.5nm finfets have 60% more performance with a higher on off contrast ratio. They talk about atomic level precision, it makes the transistors layer by layer. I wonder how it would go with new transistor structures.

The thing with low rates of 7nm and lower production is compensatable, by charging extreme extra for the small quantities to whoever wants to pay for it. So cutting edge applications, and the military might pay big dollar to suck those up. But, as a general mass product, that is difficult to justify big extreme prices for an extra 20% or so benefit. However, if you had a 1 nanometer circuit working at full speed today in even 1000 unit sucessfull production run, you could virtually auction them off to the highest bidder, 10k+ better for the military I would imagine.

Yes, I was just about to post about sub 3nm technology that used modified existing lines, so it could be done more cheaply. I can't remember the name, but night be the one you just posted.

I remotely remember some technology smaller again.

But, what about leakage with these things? Leakage was supposed to be the ultimate restriction before size makes it unviable?.

3D vertical transistors and circuit stacking has been used for many years in the industry. The problem with 3D stacking of parallel circuites particularly, is thermal buildup. Magnetic based processing can do up to a million times less heat, so are better for stacking. You should look at doing a thread on magnetic FPGA? Magnetic Quantum Cellular Automata were an early leading research technology.

Imec proposal on new transistors structure for 3nm

Samsung in their turn want them to make such:

Structure changes always also mean price hikes.