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Comment by SomeStupidPoint | Hacker News Reader

What are the nm even measuring anymore -- or is it just a numbering thing, so 4 is better than 10 is better than 14 is better than 22?

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It is all marketing bullshit at this point. TSMC's 12nm process is a rebranded version of their 16FFC low power flavor, with literally no other changes other than name so that they can market as being smaller than Samsung/Global/Intel's 14nm processes. All of the foundries are just naing the newest node roughly in line with the original ITRS roadmap names, even though the smallest feature sizes on the most advanced node in mass production at the moment (Intel's 14nm, which is a good 20%-30% smaller feature sizes than Samsung's "10nm") is around 42nm (source: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8367/14nmFeatureSize.png)

This article "How Many Nanometers" discusses this http://semiengineering.com/how-many-nanometers/

nm is short for nanometers. In this case, it's a measurement of the precision to which the transistors can be etched into the chips. The higher precision you have, the more complex you can make the chip.

But what is it measuring?

The +/- on specified dimension, the minimum width of a feature, or....what?

Inverse company marketing aggression.

Typically it's "feature pitch", or an overall scale of the various features involved in producing a transistor like width and height.

You can see more on the breakdown on pages like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer

It's more a marketing term since no particular component is exactly 10nm, but it's based on a composite of the features involved.

The wire thickness far as I know.

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