sandeep mandava @ on
What is technology node and do companies arrive at some perticular numbers?
Hi, Having studied nanoelectronics this question kept unanswered for me. Please help me..
What exactly is a technology node Ex: 22nm, 28nm, 32nm,.. recently 10nm i know one definition i.e half of the distance between two identical devices(transistors) Do gate length dont have any direct relation? How exactly the technology node arrived at above mentioned lengthss?? Why not 23nmto 24nm are being considered? Is it any how related to optimim results during scaling? Thanks in advance
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Dhawal Dilip Mahajan @ on
Hi Sandeep, This is indeed a very interesting question. The bookish answer to your question is that a technology node is the half pitch between two adjacent DRAM metal lines. Now this doesn’t correspond with the Lmin of a MOS transistor and so you have to take this definition with a pinch of salt. For example when a company focused on digital applications says its working on 17 nm technology, then it most probably means this DRAM half pitch, as that is the minimum feature size that can be “printed” by the lithography technique adopted by that company(which of course is less than the transistor Lmin in this case). Talk about a company focusing on analog or mixed signal applications, where they employ BCD processes(Bipolar DMOS, CMOS) the book definition is not applicable. So if a person from such a company says he/she is working on 130 nm node for example, then it might not mean that the DRAM half pitch is 130 nm as they might not be using DRAM’s at all! In such cases it can be safely assumed that the 130 nm is the Lmin of the MOSFET’s used in the process. I hope that I have answered your question from industry point of view.
Thanks,
Dhawal
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