what is a nm

R

reddevil6

Active Member
i no that processers are like 90nm or 45nm or somthink like that i just dont know what it means so could someone help me out also what is better higher or lower is there any think better about diffrent amounts of nm
 
That would be "MM" not "NM" for millimeter only referred to as "nanometers" another unit of measurement for the size. 1 millimeter is equal to 1,000,000.0020115 nanometers. So what does 90nm equal? 0.0000899 millimeters. It's simply a much smaller unit of measurement.
 
PC eye said:
That would be "MM" not "NM" for millimeter only referred to as "nanometers" another unit of measurement for the size. 1 millimeter is equal to 1,000,000.0020115 nanometers. So what does 90nm equal? 0.0000899 millimeters. It's simply a much smaller unit of measurement.
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He was saying nm, which is the correct term used when talking about the process size of CPU's.
 
PC eye said:
That would be "MM" not "NM" for millimeter only referred to as "nanometers" another unit of measurement for the size. 1 millimeter is equal to 1,000,000.0020115 nanometers. So what does 90nm equal? 0.0000899 millimeters. It's simply a much smaller unit of measurement.
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Since when did metric conversion involve more than changing exponents? Nano = 10^-9, milli = 10^-3; so 1 nanometer = 10^-9 meters and 10^-6 millimeters
 
[-0MEGA-];888960 said:
He was saying nm, which is the correct term used when talking about the process size of CPU's.
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That didn't come out quite the way it was intended there. :P One of those days I guess. NM=nanometer

Yeti said:
Since when did metric conversion involve more than changing exponents? Nano = 10^-9, milli = 10^-3; so 1 nanometer = 10^-9 meters and 10^-6 millimeters
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Try an online conversion and see for yourself! :rolleyes: http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/distanceunits.html

 
[-0MEGA-];888960 said:
He was saying nm, which is the correct term used when talking about the process size of CPU's.
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You mean we don't use microns anymore...

:D

.18 FTW!
 
PC eye said:
Try an online conversion and see for yourself! http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/distanceunits.html
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The website is wrong - not everything you see on the internet is right (though in this case they're very close - they just display too many digits). It may be floating point error or something, but that's the beauty of the metric system - you don't need conversions, it's all factors of 10. That website also calculates that 1 meter = 1,000.000002 mm

conversion website said:
The prefix "nano" means 1 x 10-9, so one nanometer = 0.000000001 meters. Alternatively, 1 meter contains 1,000,000,000 nanometers. Visible light contains wavelengths from roughly 300 to 800 nm. To convert this wavelength to energy, see the energy unit conversion page.
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Yeti said:
The website is wrong - not everything you see on the internet is right (though in this case they're very close - they just display too many digits). It may be floating point error or something, but that's the beauty of the metric system - you don't need conversions, it's all factors of 10. That website also calculates that 1 meter = 1,000.000002 mm
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http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/length_conversion2.php



Regardless it still points out that "nm" represents "nanometers" being a unit of measurement as the answer for the question asked.
 
http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/length_conversion2.php
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I don't care what some online calculators say; it's easy to write programs that provide wrong answers due to truncation error or floating point error. I have programs that say otherwise and the definition is quite clear - nano is precisely 10^-9. Even NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) says so.

Regardless it still points out that "nm" represents "nanometers" being a unit of measurement as the answer for the question asked.
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I can agree with that :)
 
What you are missing there with one site is why that shows 0.0000899 while the other shows 0.00009. For precise figures you often see the longer figure displayed while the other simply rounds things to the closest whole number.

Who is to say that 90nm isn't actually 90.032nm or 89.975nm and simply rounded off for marketing like seen with hard drives. Of course then you could even start a math thread in the off topic section to go into that further.
 
PC eye said:
What you are missing there with one site is why that shows 0.0000899 while the other shows 0.00009. For precise figures you often see the longer figure displayed while the other simply rounds things to the closest whole number.

Who is to say that 90nm isn't actually 90.032nm or 89.975nm and simply rounded off for marketing like seen with hard drives. Of course then you could even start a math thread in the off topic section to go into that further.
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I have to weigh in with Yeti. A nanometer (nm) is, by definition, exactly 1 x 10^-9 meters (m) or 1 x 10^-6 millimeters.

The metric system is based around factors of 10^3 designated by prefixes.

Any variance from the above in a conversion program is due to error in the program.

You're either trolling or not familiar with metric...
 
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pbdr said:
I have to weigh in with Yeti. A nanometer (nm) is, by definition, exactly 1 x 10^-9 meters (m) or 1 x 10^-6 millimeters.

The metric system is based around factors of 10^3 designated by prefixes.

Any variance from the above in a conversion program is due to error in the program.

You're either trolling or not familiar with metric...
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Do you assume a 1gb dimm is actually 1,000mb or the actual 1,024mb and even that a 500gb hard drive is actually 500gb when seeing 465gb available after partitioning? You sound like the one trolling since the original question of just what the initials "nm" represented has already been answered.
 
PC eye said:
Do you assume a 1gb dimm is actually 1,000mb or the actual 1,024mb and even that a 500gb hard drive is actually 500gb when seeing 465gb available after partitioning? You sound like the one trolling since the original question of just what the initials "nm" represented has already been answered.
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gb and nm are apples and oranges, but I think I get your point.

Yes, you can round and get less precise values (1.000002 m rounds to 1 m, etc.) and in other measurement systems (bytes to mb to gb, etc.) the prefixes which are th same as those used in metric, do not denote an exact 10^3 difference, but my point was that, by definition, 1 meter is 1 x 10^9 nm not 1,000,000,000.0013 or anything else. It is a unit conversion, not a rounding issue.

I also realize that the original poster's question had mostly been answered, but I wanted to weigh in and make sure that they received accurate information and didn't propagate an incorrect assumption.
 
Actualy nm depends on the fabrication technique of the Processor. It denotes the size of the Silicon Wafer on which the Processor is Fabricated. 45nm or 90nm etc.
 
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