Just a reminder for anyone that thinks 3nm chips means the transistors themselves are only 3nm, they are bigger than that. 3nm is the marketing name for the fab process they are using.
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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Close, except it's not a marketing term. It's part of a published IEEE standard.
The actual gate pitch and metal pitch vary by manufacturer and process type.
From Wikipedia:
The term "3 nanometer" has no direct relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch, or gate pitch) of the transistors. According to the projections contained in the 2021 update of the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems published by IEEE Standards Association Industry Connection, a 3 nm node is expected to have a contacted gate pitch of 48 nanometers, and a tightest metal pitch of 24 nanometers.[12]
And the number keeps going down because... That's good marketing. IEEE rebranded 802.11ax as wifi 6 because... Marketing. They can do it too.
IEEE rebranded 802.11ax as wifi 6 because… Marketing
Minor correction: The standard is IEEE, but it was developed by the WiFi Alliance (who make their money by certifying devices as meeting the WiFi 6 standard). It's a pretty fair marketing strategy though. Normal users aren't going to notice 802.11ac vs 802.11ax
I mean, when LLMs go out of style, at least we'll have a bunch of cheap gpus and components to buy when it inevitably floods the used market after the current generation get superseded, coupled with multiple chip fabs going online, it will eventually be raining chips.
I thought fabs are bad agains earthquakes
There was a good LTT where he toured a new fab facility in Japan. Entire building(s) basically on giant shocks. It's kind of mind blowing
This one will be designed to work during earthquake. Meaning that it won’t work without earthquakes
They are. But Taiwan is prone to earthquakes as well and seem to handle them fine
Those fabs in Taiwan, even though they look like plain boxes from the outside, are really a wonder of human ingenuity. Each machine that’s sensitive to quakes is on a vibration isolation pedestal and that pedestal is seismically braced, from what I’ve read.
Not to mention every building in Taiwan is laced with explosives in case China ever attacks…
Not to mention every building in Taiwan is laced with explosives
Be me in a different life, changing a lightbulb in my Taiwanese home. Slip on the ladder and grab the light holder tearing it from the wall. The wiring breaks against the det. cord causing a neighbourhood wide chain reaction that can be seen from space.
Standing in front of St. Peter with 50 other rather angry neighbours.
oops.jpg
Is there anything that's good against earthquakes?
James Bond’s martini.
flying type pokemon
There is no vaccine.
Godzilla?
Mr. Godzilla, i would like one RAM please 🙏
Godzilla blesses you with a large dose of radiation.
Ahhhh, not what i was looking for! 🫠 Guess that's what i get for asking a kaiju for PC components though 😅 I'll have to remember this for next time
Living in the sky
with diamonds
How come another East Asian country? Why does literally no other country want to make microchips?
Oh they want to... There are quite a few chip fabs around the world... there are very few that can manufacture at this size, along the bleeding edge of the numerous technologies necessary to do so.
Having the knowledge required to build the fab, the actual hardware required to manufacture them, and the skilled personnel to operate it all are hard to do. This is not something that you can toss together in a cave from scraps like Iron Man.
And a lot of that is by design with companies and governments trying to guarantee sovereignty by tightly controlling where these can be manufactured. The idea that enemies are less likely to try to take over/colonize a smaller country (like Taiwan) if the global chip manufacturing apparatus can be destroyed in minutes to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.
I don't understand why there aren't more EU fabs, as the EUV machines are made there.
We had global foundries, among a myriad of other fabs. We have unions and labour laws, that's bad for margins and CEO pay, we lost bleeding edge nodes due to corporate greed and US intervention.
Another factor here is that to make the most advanced chips, you need something called eleven 9 silicon. That's silicon that's 99.999999999% pure.
We can only artificially manufacture up to nine 9 silicon.
Eleven 9 has to be mined, and there's only one spot in the world were it exists. A little town in North Carolina.
That's why the US gets to say who can even attempt to manufacture advanced chips.
Eleven 9 has to be mined, and there’s only one spot in the world were it exists. A little town in North Carolina.
What
Silicon wafer production just started with metallurgical grade quartzite and then chemically processed into high purity. The input material is usually around 98% purity.
https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-science-of-ultra-pure-silicon/
As I said, we can make nine 9 silicon. But not eleven 9. China makes billions of nine 9 silicon chips per year. But they can't make eleven 9. Everyone is trying to create lab made eleven 9, it might not be possible. The natural stuff formed over hundreds of millions of years with basically no exposure to water. Which means no contaminates.
So yeah, we've not succeeded in recreating that.
https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-science-of-ultra-pure-silicon/
As I said, we can make nine 9 silicon. But not eleven 9. China makes billions of nine 9 silicon chips per year. But they can’t make eleven 9. Everyone is trying to create lab made eleven 9, it might not be possible. The natural stuff formed over hundreds of millions of years with basically no exposure to water. Which means no contaminates.
So yeah, we’ve not succeeded in recreating that.
That's not what is in the article you linked.
The very best Spruce Pine quartz, however, has an open crystalline structure, which means that hydrofluoric acid can be injected right into the crystal molecules to dissolve any lingering traces of feldspar or iron, taking the purity up another notch. Technicians take it one step further by reacting the quartz with chlorine or hydrochloric acid at high temperatures, then putting it through one or two more trade‑secret steps of physical and chemical processing.
The result is what Unimin markets as Iota quartz, the industry standard of purity. The basic Iota quartz is 99.998 percent pure SiO2. It is used to make things like halogen lamps and photovoltaic cells, but it’s not good enough to make those crucibles in which polysilicon is melted. For that you need Iota 6, or the tip‑top of the line, Iota 8, which clocks in at 99.9992 percent purity—meaning for every one billion molecules of SiO , there are only 80 molecules of impurities. Iota 8 sells for up to $10,000 a ton. Regular construction sand, at the other end of the sand scale, can be had for a few dollars per ton.
You wrote
The natural stuff formed over hundreds of millions of years with basically no exposure to water. Which means no contaminates.
From the article:
It took some 100 million years for the deeply buried molten rock to cool down and crystallize. Thanks to the depth at which it was buried and to the lack of water where all this was happening, the pegmatites formed almost without impurities. Generally speaking, the pegmatites are about 65 percent feldspar, 25 percent quartz, 8 percent mica, and the rest traces of other minerals.
The quartz they produce has a structure that makes it easier to clean so, when making the quartz crucibles for manufacturing silicon wafers it is the best choice. But the purity isn't eleven 9s, the highest quality is 99.9992% purity.
Silicon wafers are made out of even more pure silicon (9n), which is melted in the nearly pure quartz crucibles. The Spruce Pine quartz is for making the crucibles, not making the wafers.
Dead internet theory probably
Drugs are bad mkay?