Nothing about the “5 nanometer” CMOS process has any real relationship to five actual nanometers and transistor size. That train jumped off the rails years ago, and the semiconductor industry has inflicted tremendous self-harm by perpetuating the nanometer myth. In the early, heady days of Moore’s Law, it made sense to characterize processes by gate length (Lg). I saw a seemingly well-informed discussion among technical experts the other day debating the number of atoms that span five nanometers, with the apparent underlying context that once we reach “5 nanometer” process technology, Moore’s Law will be definitely done for – on the authority of Physics. Moore’s Law began to lose some of the spring in its step as Dennard Scaling failed around 2006.