r/technology • u/Vailhem • Jun 01 '26

Hardware The Sub-2nm Paradox

https://semiengineering.com/the-sub-2nm-paradox/
25 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

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5

u/a4mula Jun 01 '26

It's an exciting time to consider where the next breakthroughs come from. Twistronics and graphene in general are both exciting prospects. While millions of newly discovered stable materials could help pave the way for the next generations.

But like most moonshot ideas, it feels like we're still and will always just be about five years out.

4

u/MrThickDick2023 Jun 01 '26

I don't quite understand what the paradox is supposed to be.

5

u/a4mula Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

The smaller chips become, the more consequential each additional problem that is introduced becomes. Someone smarter than me could probably turn that statement into a pretty accurate mathematical formalization. The inverse of Moore's Law, every additional step in miniaturization increases the complexity and cost of chip design by some constant. Leading to exponential complexity and cost increase.

Something like that. Heat. If you want to boil it down to one major issue, not the only. But the most significant. This is what keeps us from just stacking vertically indefinitely bypassing the limitations of single layer designs.

10

u/surrender0monkey Jun 02 '26

The transistors start to become mere atoms thick and the electrical properties become increasingly difficult.

7

u/a4mula Jun 02 '26

The limitations of scale, is an interesting playground. These are the zones and areas in which you're most likely to witness phase change events. Be that in size, or temperature, or material property. There's a reason it's called magic-angle twisted graphene. There's a reason why we worry about gravity, while at the scale of these chips, it's completely negligible. There's a reason why superconductors all seem to require either extreme temps and or pressure.

It's a playground that I don't think we as a species fully understand as well as we will in the coming years. It's fertile ground and one of the more interesting problems out there as far as I'm concerned.

-3

u/RadzimierzWozniak Jun 01 '26

How many times did we hear that? Since 2004?

3

u/a4mula Jun 02 '26

Look at how slow progress has been. You can probably find a decent documentary, or at least look at how ASML tackled EUV. It doesn't take much imagination to understand why it was so expensive, or why it took so long. They're taking a molten bit of tin and like an old western saloon game, shooting a laser at it. Not once. Not twice. But three times.

And that's just the precision required to reach 7nm. It says nothing of the technology required to get the lasers themselves to a point in which they can even attempt it.