Trying to understand what 20nm actually 'looks like' is just too hard. The traditional reference to a fraction of a human hair doesn't really help; neither does Intel's claim that 6million of its latest Tri-Gate transistors can fit onto a full stop. It's all just numbers.
Here's some more numbers that make my head hurt. A 'typical' SoC has a die size of about 100mm2. So far, so good – I can visualise that. That die will accommodate about 1billion transistors and those transistors are linked together by about 10bn interconnects. Beginning to hurt. If you could put all those interconnects end to end, they would stretch for 20km.
Pass the paracetamol!
