I wonder how small a 6502 or Z80 CPU would be if fabbed on 3nm TSM processes node. Would it be visible with the naked eye?
> Let's consider your proposed 8086 done in a 14 nm process. Let's say we do it in CMOS, and maybe even throw in a few extra features, and it takes 100,000 transistors. The die would be very tiny, so unbelievably tiny. You could fit three thousand of them, with room to spare, in a single square millimetre, which is an area likely smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.
The 8051 is so commonly embedded deep in other ICs that it has very likely been produced on much smaller nodes.
Though, I will say that I'm amazed that anyone is still mass producing digital products on a 6" (if not smaller) wafer using a node that was invented in the mid 1970s (300 mm wafers are the current standard with the next proposed step being 450 mm). I mention digital because a lot of analog gear (and I think some MEMS) is fabbed using what most of us would consider ancient process nodes.