So, what’s the minimum pitch found on a 45 nm half-pitch process?

No, it’s not a trick question. And yet, surprisingly, the answer is not necessarily obvious. I’ve talked to a few people and it seems that the phrase “XX nm half-pitch” is becoming a name, not a numerical description. We’ve known for years that node names, once themselves descriptive of the minimum half-pitch of the chip, are now the sole purview of marketing departments and can mean just about anything. That’s why people began to specify minimum half-pitch. “Here are the results from our 32 nm node process, which has a 45 nm half-pitch …” But if a company quotes the half-pitch to describe a process, what happens if that company decides to relax the minimum pitch due to lithography challenges? The easy solution is to relax the pitch without changing the name you’ve given to that process. We are starting to see “45 nm half-pitch” processes with a metal 1 (minimum) pitch of 100 or 105 nm. We in this business are nothing if not innovative.

This is a short blog today. Too many hospitality suites last night.