Thread

1. aurareturn · 1789540438 · focus · HN ↗

   Chip density increase is slowing down. Since N10, density scaling has been 60-80%. N3 to N2 is only 20%. And now N2 to A14 is also only 20%.

   1. georgeburdell · 1789576801 · focus · HN ↗

      A lot of that is the lack of SRAM scaling. There’s still quite a bit of improvements in the back end (metal traces). That aside, if foundries adopted say a 1T-1C SRAM we’d see a pretty rapid density doubling

      1. the8472 · 1789675304 · focus · HN ↗

         MRAM is 1T, non-volatile and supposedly has nanosecond-scale write times so it naively seems like it'd be an ideal SRAM replacement. But I guess shrinking MTJ is more difficult than other components or there are some other limitations.

         1. georgeburdell · 1789707547 · focus · HN ↗

            MRAM is more like 100ns, but yeah Intel actually offers this as part of their 16nm foundry process

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