Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. manufacturing partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has started mass production of next-generation processors for new iPhones launching later this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
The processor, likely to be called the A12 chip, will use a 7-nanometer design that can be smaller, faster and more efficient than the 10-nanometer chips in current Apple devices like the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, the people said.
7 nanometers is the next planned design threshold for semiconductor manufacturing, with 5 nanometer designs about 3 years away.
To give a sense of the curve here:
- 2008: 45nm
- 2010: 32nm
- 2012: 22nm
- 2014: 14nm
- 2017: 10nm
- 2018: 7nm
- 2021: 5nm
A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. Next step smaller? An angstrom is one tenth of a nanometer. So the 7nm threshold we are about to breach is also the 70 angstrom threshold. Tiny.
And what lies beyond the 360 picometer transistor horizon?
Why, there be dragons! Albeit, very small dragons.
You have about 14 Silicon atoms in 7 nm or 10 in 5 nm. We are nearing the limit fast.
Your dates are off for Intel. 10 nm is 2018 in extremely limited numbers, when it was supposed to go mainstream in 2015. They are still struggling with 10 nm yields. Only a very low power I3 chip just hit laptops this month. We won’t see MacBook Pros with 10 nm chips until 2019 most likely unless something improves drastically.
That Apple can school Intel on the shrinkage of their chip designs is great. But Bloomberg? What’s their accuracy on these kinds of subjects, does it ever beat 20 percent right?
instead of following the hype, have a read:
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process
These names have no connection to any physical dimension.
intel’s 10nm is basically equal to TSMC’s 7nm.
5nm is pretty much the end – any smaller and the electrons just do a quantum jump from one end of the transistor to the other.
I am extremely doubtful that 5nm will happen on schedule. Keeping in mind that only Intel actually names their processes after the actual size of components any more – all the other fab companies have surrendered to marketing speak and Taiwan Semiconductor’s 7nm process should probably be more accurately called their 10 nm process (maybe even larger). So yeah, sure, Taiwan semiconductor or Samsung could do an extra refinement of their existing process and *call* it 5nm. But the actual 5nm process? Definitely not happening anytime soon.
Don’t know why your comment isn’t being upvoted more.