In which I post about a TL9 solar system

[Say, it isn't that bad!]

Originally Posted by maximara

I think that is more due to the limitation on what you can do with a CISC based chip. The iPhone uses a 7nm ARM chip (A12) and the A14 (a Bionic-based, 5 nm 12-core CPU) is supposed to show up in a Mac in 2021.

Though we are going to hit the quantum tunelling wall soon even with functional prototype 3 nm chips due out in 2021. I'm not sure if the gate-all-around FETs for 2nm chips is going to pan out and that may be the limit with RISC based instruction sets.

CISC or RISC doesn't change the fundamental size of transistors; although Arm being a (relatively) modern design with little baggage does help decrease the number of transistors needed.

Ultimately, though, Apple changing from x86 to Arm may be an indication that they are attempting to get around the soft wall of transistor size as much as practical.