what is nanometre technology in chip fabrication mean?

Question

what dimension is it supposed to measure on the chip?

Answer 1

As p0 mentioned, the chip technology is taken from the channel length measurement of a transistor..i.e. if the channel length is 90nm then, the transistor is made from 90nm technology. The current leading chip technology is 65nm from Intel.

The reason for constantly shrinking transistors is quite simple. If I were able to shrink the current technology by half, I would be able to fit Quadriple the amount of transistors in the same area than before (more density). This allows for more elaborate circuit designs and bigger cache sizes.
Also, with decreasing size comes increasing switching speed, and lower power consumption. (Assuming that the companies are able to resolve problems like sub-threshold leakage, short-circuit leakage and some other problems being faced with the current technology)

There are also some other factors affecting the performance of a chip, which will need to be resolved before the technology goes to 20nm or lower

Answer 2

The dimension you are refering to is the channel length of the mosfet transistor. Since you are asking a question like this I will assume you know what the channel length is (length between the source and drain terminal). It is also known as the feature size. A 90nm technology means that the mask used in fabrication will put 90nm between the source and drain region. This is actually not the true channel length... due to limitation of processing technology, some of the dopant at the drain/source will protrude into the channel area, effectively reducing the channel length slightly.

Answer 3

nanotechnology
The science of developing materials at the atomic and molecular level in order to imbue them with special electrical and chemical properties. Nanotechnology, which deals with devices typically less than 100 nanometers in size, is expected to make a significant contribution to the fields of computer storage, semiconductors, biotechnology, manufacturing and energy.

Envisioned are all kinds of amazing products, including extraordinarily tiny computers that are very powerful, building materials that withstand earthquakes, advanced systems for drug delivery and custom-tailored pharmaceuticals as well as the elimination of invasive surgery, because repairs can be made from within the body.

Larry Bock, CEO of Nanosys, who helped launch more than a dozen successful biotech companies in his career, believes that nanotech will impact even more industries than biotech. In an excerpted article from the March 2003 Nanotech Report, he compared nanotechnology with the microelectronics industry. Bock said that "a single chemistry graduate student can create novel devices and device architectures not even imaginable or manufacturable by today's biggest microprocessor companies. That is because these devices are fabricated chemically, or from the bottom up. Existing microelectronics technology is fabricated by etching wafers, or from the top down." See AFM, STM, Buckyball, nanotube and MEMS.

Answer 4

in chip fabrication, you are talking about the size of the oxide in the transistors you are fab-ing.

The term microprocessor came about because at the time the fab. process produced micrometer technology.

Now days the size is under 90 nanometers. SO really any IC that uses transistors measured in nanometers is technically nano-technology