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@andy_matuschak

Fascinating thread. The first ARM processor used a 3µm process… now down to 5nm, or ~360,000x the density.. Moore's law suggests 35 years => ~17-18 doublings of transistor density, or a factor of 131k-262k. Ahead of schedule! (to say nothing of parallelism, etc)

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· Oct 18, 2021

Apple just announced the ARM-based M1 Max processor, so it's interesting to compare it with the first ARM processor, created by Acorn Computers in 1985 as a coprocessor for the BBC Micro computer. Designers were Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber.

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Well, not to rain in the parade, but node names haven’t been accurate for a while. So that “5nm” has more like a 25nm gate length

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· Sep 20, 2019

TSMC 5nm specs? "A 5nm finFET may have a 48nm gate pitch with a 28nm metal pitch." TSMC 7nm is 57nm/40nm, for reference. twitter.com/SemiEngineerin…

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@andy_matuschak

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Ah, thanks! Still the right order of magnitude for the 35 year Moore's law prediction, surprisingly.

12:55 AM · Oct 19, 2021TweetDeck

@BrianTHeligman

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@andy_matuschak

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It is wild that Moore made the prediction after seeing the number of transistors per chip double from 32 to 64. The 6th doubling!

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Heligman’s law for batteries when

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