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What is a 3nm process chip, and what does it mean to you?
In the early days of semiconductor processors, there was a simple explanation—people just measured the gate length of the transistors. For the first few decades, the unit of measurement was micrometers (millionths of a meter, or microns). As technology matured, the unit of measurement gradually increased to nanometers (billionths of a meter, or nanometers).
What are 3nm process chips?
In the early days of semiconductor processors, there was a simple explanation—people just measured the gate length of the transistors. For the first few decades, the unit of measurement was micrometers (millionths of a meter, or microns). As technology matured, the unit of measurement gradually increased to nanometers (billionths of a meter, or nanometers). As transistor sizes decreased, we saw improvements in performance, lower power consumption, and reduced heat generation. At that time, it was relatively easy to say that smaller transistors were better than larger ones, and the improvements in process nodes among manufacturers were also similar.
However, over the past few decades, measuring performance improvements solely based on transistor size has become more complex, as various proprietary improvements in integrated circuit design (from planar transistors to various types of 3D transistors) and manufacturing processes have effectively decoupled the physical size of transistors from the process node name. Therefore, 3nm process chips are essentially a marketing term and have no direct relationship to the size of the transistors. Chips from two generations of process nodes (e.g., 5nm and 3nm) produced by the same manufacturer should have smaller overall transistor sizes on the smaller process node. However, these sizes do not necessarily correspond to the process node name.
Instead, following the processor node scaling plan set by the now-defunct International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) and the later International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS), microchip manufacturers market each generation of their processors according to the process node names in the roadmap (e.g., 5nm process and 3nm process nodes). It is expected that the chips will follow the IRDS predictions for dimensions such as contact gate pitch and metal pitch, but the dimensions may be smaller.
Therefore, comparing a 5nm process chip and AMD's 5nm process chip may not be as simple as looking at the transistor gate length (or other metrics such as metal pitch). There are various proposals for new process node nomenclature, such as the GMT (determining transistor density) and LMC (including memory and interconnect density) proposals. At the same time, it is necessary to compare the actual performance of competing chips, or to compare the performance between different generations of process nodes from the same manufacturer.
In this case, chips using TSMC's 3nm process have been developed, which is a good example of the difference between process node names and manufacturer processes. There is no more precise specification of which proprietary 3nm process node of TSMC is being used—N3, N3E, N3S, N3P, or N3X.
Instead, some companies have detailed the generational improvements compared to TSMC's N5 process (belonging to the 5nm process node). It is claimed that compared to the N5 process, TSMC's 3nm process "currently offers up to 18% speed improvement at the same power, 32% power reduction at the same speed, and approximately 60% increase in logic density."
What does a 3nm process chip mean to you?
On average, the smaller the transistor, the better the performance, power consumption, and heat dissipation. The smaller the transistor, the higher the transistor density. Therefore, because the transmission distance within and between transistors is shorter, the time it takes for electrons to travel in the circuit is shorter, thus increasing processing speed. They also require less energy to travel these shorter distances, reducing the required input power, and less energy is lost as heat due to less movement.
All of this means better performance, battery life, and overall heat generation. This means that devices using 3nm chips will be faster and have longer battery life than devices using 5nm or 4nm process chips from the same chip manufacturer.
Of course, there are more factors that affect these metrics besides the processor or SoC used. Other factors such as chip design or architecture, the speed of the paired memory, and software will all affect the performance of the end device (whether it is a smartphone, tablet, or PC).
Battery life is also affected by the power consumption of other components on the device (such as the display) and hardware and software optimization. Heat dissipation largely depends on the design of the device and the amount of cooling combined with it.
The production cost of new-generation process node chips is higher, and the yield per wafer is lower in the initial production phase than previous generations, which also means that they will be limited to high-end phones and tablets produced by companies. Therefore, for at least the next year, you can expect smartphones and tablets with 3nm process chips to only appear in flagship products from various manufacturers.
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