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richtopia [soylentnews.org] writes:

A number of stories here have covered the advancement to 10nm chips: Samsung: Exynos [soylentnews.org], TSMC: MediaTech Helio X30 [soylentnews.org] for example. A reoccuring comment in the discussions is if 10nm from Samsung is equivalent to 10nm for TSMC or Intel.

Intel's Mark Bohr discussed the difficulty of comparing process nodes during Manufacturing Day [intel.com], specifically proposing to move the industry to transistor density as a comparative metric. Surprisingly enough, Intel claims their 10nm process is roughly twice as dense of the competition. Intel is not the only ones frustrated by comparing process nodes, as this recent article [eetimes.com] tries to compare current "14nm" nodes between the major vendors.

To further confuse the discussion is new 22nm processes: Global Foundries 22nm FD-SOI [globalfoundries.com] and Intel's just announced 22FFL process [intel.com], both targeting energy efficient devices. GF's is in high volume manufacturing [dreamchip.de] already while Intel's is just announced, but further cement's Intel's delve into foundry work.

These topics are largely covered by EETimes' summary of Intel's recent announcements [eetimes.com]

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