Intel, Samsung, Toshiba together aim for 10nm chips by 2016

Intel, Samsung, and Toshiba are joining forces and pooling R&D efforts to build 10 nanometer semiconductor chips by 2016, according to Reuters. The three have joined a consortium to work towards the goal. The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is expected to provide 50 percent for the initiative, which equates to 5 billion yen ($62.12 million or €44.69 million). The rest is expected to come from the members of the consortium.

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Reasonable SSD prices cannot get here soon enough!

I wonder, at what fab size these component traces will reach an equilibrium? I mean, at some point they're going to get so small that they wont be able to be mass produced consistently enough to conduct electricity.

Minor typo on the word Samsung in the 2nd paragraph.
2016 is a ways off but this is exciting and a good step ahead non the less!
@customcarvin - Thats right they keep stepping down the voltages so that the electricity doesnt jump between 2 bits/addresses. It'd be cool to be on the engineering side of this to better understand limitations and what the future may hold instead.

How low can you go? Amirite!

10nm thats like really small, i though it wasnt possible cause that small atom begin to touch each other or something like that

They keep pushing "Moore's Law" but being that small, how are they going to deal with Errors?

With smaller versions of the magic and unicorns they use already.

i cant wait till something like microITX motherboard or picoITX (maybe this already exists) but good to know hardware are advancing steadily.

Talk about heaps of money for research..
Anyways, 10nm is..f ing tiny.

The three kings(Three Wise Men) from the east,coming together,bringing R&D gifts to the SSD child.....lowl.Can''t wait to see what this trio can achieve.

Yeah this problem is being addressed by many people

Take a look at this.

http://www.ted.com/talks/kwabena_boahen_on_a_computer_that_works_like_the_brain.html

I wonder what the size of the transistor is in samsungs 20nm NANDs.Probably something in the pico's.

We should just make smaller machines to make smaller machines to make even smaller machines.. then it would be a piece of cake... right? lmao

Nice to see moores law is still working

Getting them smaller makes them all the more portable though, stability of these stuffs, reliability and shelf life matters just as much if not more. let them also put durability into consideration because we are still the ones to buy these stuffs on the long run . Good value for our bucks isn't negotiable.

Brilliant news all round, 10nm not only brings even more effiecient cpus, gpus and motherboard chips but I see the HUGE advantage in making larger capacity SSD's... 512gb... more like 512Tb by the time this tech comes about.

So what happens after they get down to 1nm.

It will be the start of the new era. The pico era. pm

I actually lol'd

It was 120nm back then (199x?), now 32nm is already in mass production, but how much has the motherboard of a computer shrank? As far as I can remember, the PC desktop casing has grown much larger than those boxes that I used to have back in 199x. Yeah I know we should be talking about mobile and embedded devices, but shouldn't be the motherboard of a standard PC follow the same pace?