5nm vs. 3nm

Foundry vendors are readying the next wave of advanced processes, but their customers will face a myriad of confusing options—including whether to develop chips at 5nm, wait until 3nm, or opt for something in between. At advanced nodes, meanwhile, Samsung and TSMC are shipping 7nm processes using today’s finFET transistors, and both vendors will extend the finFET to 5nm. So at this cadence, chipmakers introduced a new process technology with more transistor density, enabling the industry to lower the cost per transistor.

Source: semiengineering.com