The nomenclature for microchip manufacturing left reality a couple generations ago. Intel’s 14A process is not a true 14A half-pitch. It’s kind of like how they started naming CPUs off “performance equivalents” instead of using raw clock speed. And this isn’t just Intel. TSMC, Samsung, everyone is doing half-pitch equivalent naming now a days.
Certain feature sizes have hit a point of diminishing returns, so they are finding new ways to increase performance. Each generation is better than the last but we have moved beyond simple shrinkage.
Comparing Intel’s 14A label to TSMCs 16A is meaningless without performance benchmarks. They are both just marketing terms. Like the Intel/AMD CPU wars. You can’t say one is better because the label says it’s faster. There’s so much other stuff to consider.
This is the industry roadmap from 2022: https://irds.ieee.org/images/files/pdf/2022/2022IRDS_Litho.p... If you look at page 6 there is a nice table that kind of explains it.
Certain feature sizes have hit a point of diminishing returns, so they are finding new ways to increase performance. Each generation is better than the last but we have moved beyond simple shrinkage.
Comparing Intel’s 14A label to TSMCs 16A is meaningless without performance benchmarks. They are both just marketing terms. Like the Intel/AMD CPU wars. You can’t say one is better because the label says it’s faster. There’s so much other stuff to consider.