When a company like Intel releases a brand-new micro-architecture,
it's pretty-much become a given that we'll be impressed. Sometimes, performance
sees a nice boost, and the constant shrinking of the transistor size just
boggles the mind. But despite how impressive any new launch is, Intel always
has something even more impressive in the pipeline, continuing the progression
we've come to expect.
While 22nm is the current hotness for CPUs, Intel has both
7nm and 5nm in the planning stages, with the latter set to release in about ten
years - barring any complications. How the company will accomplish such a small
process is yet to be seen, but it can be expected that the challenges will be
enormous. In shrinking down to even just 22nm, there have always been hurdles
to overcome. Power leakage remains an important issue, as it can reduce
stability and also efficiency.
In many ways, the fact that we even have 22nm-based
processors is impressive, but picture that size shrinking down even further, to
about 1/4th. To help put this all into perspective, the thickness of a strand
of human hair is 60,000nm, so at 5nm, it would require 12,000 transistors set
side-by-side to equal the thickness of just a single strand of hair.
Impressive, isn't it?
More impressive will be seeing these products actually being
produced... if the obvious challenges will be overcome.
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