Ok eli5 version 7nm holds double transistors as 14, or half as big chip, consumes lower power, less heat that the 14, no watercoolers etc. needed anymore.

80,000- 100,000 nanometers

TSMC’s 10nm node is 2x Denser than their 12nm/16nm. It is also 15% faster and 35% power efficient. The density of TSMC’s 10nm Process is 60.3 MTr/mm².

For many reasons. Second, it is simply because you shouldn’t take the next step and jump from 10nm to 7nm. The investment made over the years and the delays suffered by this node force Intel to put the largest number of processors on the market to try to alleviate costs.

Fast and Efficient 12nm FinFET Compact Technology (12FFC) drives gate density to the maximum and provides the best performance among the industry’s 16/14nm-class offerings. Compared to TSMC’s 20nm SoC process, its 16/12nm class is 50% faster and consumes 60% less power at the same speed.

AMD does not have a “7nm” manufacturing process. AMDs Zen2 core dies(used in Ryzen 3000 series, ryzen 4000 APUs and new EPYCs) and Navi GPUs are manufactured in TMSCs factories, AMD uses TSMCs “7nm” manufacturing process.

The former is an Intel 14nm+++ production chip and the latter made for AMD by TSMC on its 7nm process. You probably expect the actual transistor size revealed by the SEM to be rather different…

“nm” refers to nanometers. That generally refers to the fabrication process rather than the processor itself. A lower number means we can pack the chip more densely, which generally gives a performance boost. A smaller chip with more transistors will generally be more capable than a larger chip with fewer transistors.

7 nm

For example, 12nm is an extension of 16nm/14nm. It provides slightly better performance than 16nm/14nm. Intel’s 14nm process is roughly equivalent to 10nm from other foundries. Intel’s 10nm is similar to 7nm from GlobalFoundries and TSMC, as well as 8nm from Samsung.

In mid 2020 TSMC claimed its (N5) 5nm process offered 1.8x the density of its 7nm N7 process, with 15% speed improvement or 30% lower power consumption; an improved sub-version (N5P) was claimed to improve on N5 with +5% speed or -10% power.

around 10-20 nanometers

After 5nm comes 3nm in 2022. TSMC estimates it will deliver a reduction in power use of 25 to 30 percent at the same speed or 10 to 15 percent faster speed at the same power, compared to the 5nm process we’re going to see for the first time this fall.

1 nanometer is about 5 atoms. But remember going from 7nm to 5nm should double the number of transistors on a chip. Also remember that the “contacted metal pitch” is perhaps more limiting than the minimum feature size. So reducing the contacted metal pitch may be easier than reducing the feature size.

This miniaturization trend has led to silicon chips today that have almost unimaginably small circuitry. Transistors, the tiny switches that implement computer microprocessors, are so small that 1,000 of them laid end-to-end are no wider than a human hair.

At just a single photon the world’s smallest transistor has literally zero size. WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Transistors are found in every electronic device on Earth, but Moore’s Law is running out of steam, and now researchers have developed the world’s smallest transistor – with zero size.

There’s a phsyical limit to transistor size!

Are those micrometers? Because one micrometer is 1000 nanometers. That’s the opposite of smaller. The smallest a transistor can be and still work is a few silicon atoms wide, so theoretically we’re talking about somewhere in between 0.6 and 1nm for the smallest silicon transistor possible.

They’re made of silicon, the second-most abundant material on our planet. Silicon’s atomic size is about 0.2 nanometers. Today’s transistors are about 70 silicon atoms wide, so the possibility of making them even smaller is itself shrinking.

Today, Intel produces microprocessors with transistors measuring only 45 nanometers wide. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter! Intel and other microprocessor manufacturers are already working on the next generation of chips. These will use transistors measuring a mere 32 nanometers in width.