What happens when the processors hit 1 nm? Is it the end?

As you know, today the magnitude used to measure the lithographic processes with which chips are manufactured is nanometers (although they really refer to the size of the transistors ), and all the major chip manufacturers are struggling to keep reducing this size to the minimum possible but what will happen once 1 nm is reached? Is it the end of the road and can they continue to improve the lithography of the chips?

To put these dimensions in perspective, you must first know what nanometers are: a nanometer is 0.000000001 meters or 10⁻⁹m. To put this in perspective, a human hair is about 0.08 millimeters thick, a red blood cell is 5 microns, or a (non-computer) virus is on the order of 100 nanometers. Already on this scale, we have that proteins measure 10 nanometers, or lipids measure about 5 nm. For us to understand, a 1 nm lithograph would be making transistors 100 times smaller than a virus.

What is a nanometer?

A nanometer is a unit of length that makes it possible to measure extremely small dimensions. A nanometer is equivalent to a millionth of a millimeter or what is the same, to a billionth of a meter.

This means that 1,000,000 nanometers are exactly equal to 1 millimeter and 1,000,000,000 nanometers (1 · 10⁹ nm) is exactly equal to 1 meter.

The word nanometer comes from Greek and is a combination of the words nano and meter. The prefix nano comes from the Greek νάνος (Nanos) and means dwarf. The meter is the unit of measurement.

This unit is represented by the symbol nm.

This unit is especially useful in the world of nanotechnology. It is also used to measure the wavelength of some electromagnetic waves. Specifically from infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light.

 How small is a nanometer?

When we talk about units of measurement, the most common are undoubtedly kilometers, meters, centimeters, and millimeters. This is normal if we take into account that a human being measures slightly more than one and a half meters on average, or that our brain is between 13 and 17 centimeters long, while even something as small as a fly can measure between 5 and 8 millimeters. However, for measurements smaller than this it can be a bit difficult to imagine, especially if we tell you that a nanometer is equivalent to 0.000000001 meters, or 10⁻⁹m.

What's after 1nm lithography?

Manufacturers are currently having quite a few problems with 10nm fabrication nodes, although 7nm is already dominated by some manufacturers and 5 and 3nm are on the way. However, at this point, we are already beginning to talk about decimals (2.5 nm) because it is increasingly complicated, and yet all the main manufacturers have in their plans not only to reach 1 nm but to continue reducing the scale From there.

Reducing the size of the transistors is essential to be able to incorporate a greater number of them on the same surface, thus improving energy efficiency since performance is improved while maintaining or even reducing consumption. This creates other problems such as the density with which the heat is generated, but that is another matter: what we all have clear is that the objective is to continue reducing the scale of these transistors that are like neurons in the brain but in a CPU.

Obviously, below 1 nm we will have to stop using nanometers as a scale (or use decimals, of course) and we will start using picometers, and although there is still a long way to go to get there, you must be aware of one thing: at the moment in which 0.1 nm transistors are manufactured, we will already be talking about an atomic and not nanometric scale, which brings us to the next point in this article.

Molecular hardware, the future of lithography

When we think of a molecule we always have something extraordinarily small in mind, so small that it can only be seen with a very powerful microscope or highly specialized equipment. However, we must also bear in mind that a molecule does not always have an atomic scale, and we only have to see human DNA, something that we cannot see with the naked eye but that if it were fully stretched it could measure up to 3 meters in length.

However, we can effectively also put the opposite example, such as a water molecule (H₂O) that has a diameter of approximately 0.275 nanometers, and this reference is precisely the one that has been working for a long time because future lithography would literally be 0.3 nanometers. , a third of a 1 nm lithograph that we haven't even gotten to yet. Can you imagine how many transistors would fit in the size of a normal processor?

The fact is that the development of lithographs will not be finished in 1 nm, and in fact, they have been researching sub-nanometer manufacturing lithographs for some time. However, we are still far from that because, among other things, to achieve something like this you have to work at cryogenic temperatures and they have not yet found a way to make communication channels at the molecular level. They are in it and we repeat that we are still far away, but to get there, we will get there.