7nm feature sizes announced

[tomBitonti]

Taking a break from the heavier discussions, just saw this:

See: http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2015/07/a-new-wave-innovation-chips.html?lnk=w3news

Working together, we achieved an industry first–producing working test chips at New York’s SUNY NanoTech Complex near Albany whose smallest features approach 7 nanometers. As a result, the industry will be able to place more than 20 billion tiny switches on chips the size of a fingernail.

Can anyone say how much of an improvement that is?

Thx!

TomB

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A buttload. There, I said it.

 

[tuxgeo]

Roughly an order of magnitude (i.e. 10x).

Current Intel "Broadwell" chips have about 1.9 billion transistors, so 20 billion is about 10x current technology -- at least, as compared to Intel Corp.'s current 14 nm process.