News GlobalFoundries’ 12LP+ 12nm Node Promises 10nm-Class Power and Performance

MasterMadBones

Distinguished
Finally some good news out of GF again. This actually seems so close to 7nm that it may have been wiser to name it as such (or 10nm) from a marketing standpoint. Node naming has little to do with actual feature size these days anyway.
 
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bit_user

Polypheme
Ambassador
Finally some good news out of GF again. This actually seems so close to 7nm that it may have been wiser to name it as such (or 10nm) from a marketing standpoint. Node naming has little to do with actual feature size these days anyway.
IIRC, TSMC delivered a 2x density increase between 14 nm and 7 nm. Really, it should've been more like 4x, to justify that jump in naming, but at least it was big.

Anyway, the point is that these guys really can't call it 7 nm, with only a 15% density improvement. You have to keep in mind that one way chips (particularly things like GPUs, FPGAs, AI accelerators, etc.) get more performance by moving to a smaller node is by using more transistors. If they only get the stated efficiency improvements with such a modest bump in transistor count, that's only roughly half of the picture.

BTW, I wish this were the process that the RX 590 used. Then, it might've actually delivered a worthwhile benefit.