just how small can transistor size on a chip get?

[Quimby2016]

Isthere going to be a size that actually might be too small for electrons to pass thru?. what then is chip evolution dead then?

 

[BinarySynapse]

Size isn't constrained by the size of the electrons (they're point particles, so they don't actually have a size. though traditionally they're considered to have a radius of 1fm or 0.000001nm), but rather the size of an insulating material's ability to block the passage of said electrons. IIRC for silicon, that's about 5nm.

 

[Quimby2016]

Size isn't constrained by the size of the electrons (they're point particles, so they don't actually have a size) those traditionally they're considered to have a radius of 1fm or 0.000001nm), but rather the size of an insulating material's ability to block the passage of said electrons. IIRC for silicon, that's about 5nm.

thank you for the info it was interesting .

 

[gamerk2]

Size isn't constrained by the size of the electrons (they're point particles, so they don't actually have a size. though traditionally they're considered to have a radius of 1fm or 0.000001nm), but rather the size of an insulating material's ability to block the passage of said electrons. IIRC for silicon, that's about 5nm.

Pretty much this; below 5nm or so electron leakage becomes a major limiting factor; there's still the thought 4nm/3nm might be possible, but there's only so much you can do when your fighting the laws of physics.

 

[lasserith]

Just remember that 3 nm number has nothing to do with nodes. 10nm node minimum pitch is 32 nm.

Edit: For Intel. For others it's all a clusterfuck.

 

[TheBloodEagle]

Wanted to throw in that if it ever becomes a huge problem, we could move onto optical transistors and photonic interconnects (this work is already being done), thus mitigate it.

 

[AlphaAtlas]

Wanted to throw in that if it ever becomes a huge problem, we could move onto optical transistors and photonic interconnects (this work is already being done), thus mitigate it.

This ^

Electricity isn't dead yet though. Even if they can't shrink transistors more, they can switch materials to get better performance.

Whether electrical or photonic (or a mix), we can also start going more and more 3D, as we're already doing with flash storage.


Anyway, we are quickly reaching the inflection point where the chip designers/fabs have to aggressivley pursue one or more of those paths instead of simply shrinking the transistors more.