[mota7]

It's hard to convey just how ridiculously complex and expensive 5nm is compared with 90nm.

5nm is a multi-billion dollar fab, absurdly high running costs, and very expensive wafers.

As a data point: 5nm lithography equipment is > $100M/unit, needs megawatts of power to run, and they handle about 60-80 wafers per hour.

90nm lithography equipment is ~ $1M/unit, needs kilowatts of power to run, and they handle about 60-80 wafers per hour.

So a wafer scanned on 5nm equipment that could have been scanned on 9nm equipment is carrying a very large capital and operational cost burden that's pointless.

[j_walter]

To be fair...a new 90nm fab is multi-billion dollars too

[sudosysgen]

5nm also has about 100x more density than 90nm, to be fair.

[rcxdude]

Yeah, but that's no advantage if the device you're making can't be made any smaller due to non-manufacturing constraints, which is the case for power electronics, a lot of analog electronics, and also a suprising amount of digital electronics as well (where the whole device will fit in the spaces between the bond pads needed to connect the chip to anything else).