TSMC 4nm Production Hit By... A Full Quarter Advance?

[Totally]

pm (picometer)
zm (zeptometer)
ym (Yoctometer)
PL (Planck length, widely considered to be the smallest measure of distance, equal to about 1.6 x 10-35m.)

then comes No.Sm.TT...... as in No Smaller than this, hehehe

150 pm is pretty much the floor unless, some figures out how to fabricate chips using sub-atomic particles.

 

[medi01]

Lets assume we reach 1nm node, whats next after that ?

You realize it is purely marketing bazinga names, don't you?
7nm TSMC L3 transistor in Zen is 22 by 22nm.

 

[mtcn77]

You realize it is purely marketing bazinga names, don't you?
7nm TSMC L3 transistor in Zen is 22 by 22nm.

But it is soon gonna be vertical in the near future.

 

[Wirko]

But it is soon gonna be vertical in the near future.

This will be as efficient as parking your scooter toppled to use less space.

Well that's an exaggeration but Samsung 3nm, if that's what you mean, will bring no more than a "45% reduction in area when compared with 7nm" - for a mix of logic and SRAM, and SRAM has scaled poorly on latest nodes, compared to logic.

You realize it is purely marketing bazinga names, don't you?
7nm TSMC L3 transistor in Zen is 22 by 22nm.

If only it was. Try to calculate the size of a transistor on the AMD's 6x6 mm cache die, which is said to be optimised for SRAM, and contains (almost) nothing else. I get 106 by 106 nm.

 

[Thefumigator]

Lets assume we reach 1nm node, whats next after that ?

The first AMD Athlon (1999 I believe) was made in 0.25 μm, if that makes sense.

 

[mtcn77]

This will be as efficient as parking your scooter toppled to use less space.

Well that's an exaggeration but Samsung 3nm, if that's what you mean,

Samsung has a vnand product which beats the market in every way. That is what I mean...

 

[Legacy-ZA]

There's money in them silicon wafers......................

I always said, the one that figured out how to make sand into something useful, will never have financial issues again, plenty of it on the "earth" yet we always seem to have some sort of supply issue.

 

[mtcn77]

I always said, the one that figured out how to make sand into something useful, will never have financial issues again, plenty of it on the "earth" yet we always seem to have some sort of supply issue.

Yet, sources claim we are running out. They would like the sand to be "coarse" they say. Would you believe it...
Turns out we won't turn into house plants in the future virtual revolution after all.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

150 pm is pretty much the floor unless, some figures out how to fabricate chips using sub-atomic particles.

nanotubes will be the next evolution.

 

[mtcn77]

nanotubes will be the next evolution.

Exactly, we will have none of this zero sum game any more. It is room temperature superconductors, or else in the future.

 

[Totally]

nanotubes will be the next evolution.

Nanotubes can't be smaller than 1 atom in thickness and a gold atom is only 150 pm wide, and silicon is 111pm

 

[Vayra86]

I always said, the one that figured out how to make sand into something useful, will never have financial issues again, plenty of it on the "earth" yet we always seem to have some sort of supply issue.

We're actually running out of sand. Lots of it needed for land creation in the increasing amount of ocean, construction, etc.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

We're actually running out of sand. Lots of it needed for land creation in the increasing amount of ocean, construction, etc.

Running out? Stop drinking the cool aid that you are on.

There are oceans of sand and not just in Africa.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

We're actually running out of sand. Lots of it needed for land creation in the increasing amount of ocean, construction, etc.

I think you need a tad ( just a smidgen ) more specific here.

 

[KarymidoN]

Running out? Stop drinking the cool aid that you are on.

View attachment 202979

View attachment 202969

There are oceans of sand and not just in Africa.

Why the world is running out of sand

It may be little more than grains of weathered rock, and can be found on deserts and beaches around the world, but sand is also the world’s second most consumed natural resource.

www.bbc.com

dude is just reading bbcnews stuff, don't blame him.

 

[The red spirit]

I always said, the one that figured out how to make sand into something useful, will never have financial issues again, plenty of it on the "earth" yet we always seem to have some sort of supply issue.

It's not like they actually use just a sand. They use a way finer and much rarer version of it. You can read this:

Silicon Ingot

SVM offers silicon ingot in diameters ranging from 100mm to 300mm, as well as custom diameters available on a special-order basis.

svmi.com

And watch this from 4:08:

Even if you wanted to make some really antiquated chip on huge process node, the sand itself most likely wouldn't be useful.

 

[Totally]

It's not like they actually use just a sand. They use a way finer and much rarer version of it. You can read this:

That's nonsense, finer, no (you aren't thinking here are you?) rare no, not necessarily. It's a refined material, get a bunch a sand purify it into silica sand, then melt it down with some doping agents mixed and form a crystal. not something they mine, dig up.

EDIT: tbh I genuinely baffled someone convinced you or convinced yourself they used special sand.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Why the world is running out of sand

It may be little more than grains of weathered rock, and can be found on deserts and beaches around the world, but sand is also the world’s second most consumed natural resource.

www.bbc.com

dude is just reading bbcnews stuff, don't blame him.

The article reminds of the boy who cried wolf because the sky is falling.

 

[Wirko]

That's nonsense, finer, no (you aren't thinking here are you?) rare no, not necessarily. It's a refined material, get a bunch a sand purify it into silica sand, then melt it down with some doping agents mixed and form a crystal. not something they mine, dig up.

EDIT: tbh I genuinely baffled someone convinced you or convinced yourself they used special sand.

"Not just any sand, but silica sand, specially quarried for this purpose and having concentrations of quartz (silicon dioxide) as high as 95%."

From Sand To Wafers

The journey of silicon and its many uses.

semiengineering.com

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

they are using sand because mining sandstone and quartz silica is too expensive.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

Why the world is running out of sand

It may be little more than grains of weathered rock, and can be found on deserts and beaches around the world, but sand is also the world’s second most consumed natural resource.

www.bbc.com

dude is just reading bbcnews stuff, don't blame him.

I suppose if they should create a manufacturing facility in one of these places one day, they can give him the job shoveling clean around the building each day, lest nobody can get inside the building to work due to sheer amounts of the stuff being shifted on a daily basis, he will curse so much he would quit after the first week. I don't think he will ever say there is a shortage again.

 

[The red spirit]

That's nonsense, finer, no (you aren't thinking here are you?) rare no, not necessarily. It's a refined material, get a bunch a sand purify it into silica sand, then melt it down with some doping agents mixed and form a crystal. not something they mine, dig up.

EDIT: tbh I genuinely baffled someone convinced you or convinced yourself they used special sand.

Are you for real mate? Technically any rocky material can be called sand if it's under certain specified particle size. That sand can have literally any hard material, not necessarily a silicon. Silicon itself is silverish material, most sand is quite orange, so it likely has a lot of stuff that isn't silicon. And even if your sand has some silicon, then purifying isn't exactly cheap or easy. And by definition, you can't melt it into crystal. And if you actually read anything about it, then you would know that process is long and complicated:

Czochralski method - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The key part is that silicon itself is Si02 and only Si is what they need. Purifying and reshaping quartz into silicon ingots is a complicated process:

And then turning it into something useful isn't easy either:

And well we are running out of sand too:

And this is roughly (not industrially) how you get SiO2 out of sand:

It seems that construction industries can't use that "fine" sand and they are fighting over it, but it may be useful for chip manufacturing. Anyway, my point is that making sand into chips is very complicated and likely not all sand can be used for SiO2 production (or at least in economically viable way).

And btw sand mafia is no fun:

 

[Prima.Vera]

150 pm is pretty much the floor unless, some figures out how to fabricate chips using sub-atomic particles.

The floor is 111Pm, which is the size of the Silicon atom. And I think they are already considering other materials to replace Silicon....

 

[Totally]

The floor is 111Pm, which is the size of the Silicon atom. And I think they are already considering other materials to replace Silicon....

Floor is determined bit the largest elements being used not the smallest, conductors are still required and all currently used are larger than Si which already places very high on the table at 14, with only four other room temp being smaller and the rest gases.

 

[Vayra86]

Running out? Stop drinking the cool aid that you are on.

View attachment 202979

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There are oceans of sand and not just in Africa.

Here you go

The World is Running Out of Sand

The little-known exploitation of this seemingly infinite resource could wreak political and environmental havoc

www.smithsonianmag.com

A sand shortage? The world is running out of a crucial — but under-appreciated — commodity

The world is facing a shortage of sand — and climate scientists say it constitutes one of the greatest sustainability challenges of the 21st century.

www.cnbc.com

Its pretty recent news.

Why the world is running out of sand

It may be little more than grains of weathered rock, and can be found on deserts and beaches around the world, but sand is also the world’s second most consumed natural resource.

www.bbc.com

dude is just reading bbcnews stuff, don't blame him.

Its a simple fact that like oil, we're using this natural resource faster than it comes back and exploitation difficulty increases over time or creates new problems, making it ever more expensive. Its more of the same and fits in the current frame of climate and sustainability.

'Don't blame him' - if you have some counter argument or factoid to provide perspective on that sentence, please do, otherwise you're just in denial and maybe you just learned something. All good either way...

I think its important to understand that all of these base resources are the ground work for all of the stuff we make out of it, and we make ever more stuff for more people. We synthesize a lot of materials, so it may look like something else, but the essence is that everything comes back to those basic natural resources every time. Logic dictates they all run out or lose purity. Even water - pure, clean water - is harder to come by every day, and purifying faster than we use it is a challenge.

Some games have predicted these shortages I'll never forget this one - Dark Reign. 1997. Note the resource bar bottom right. And back on topic: did you know TSMC had water supply issues recently?