Technology

And that's what benchmarks are for

Later each new generation process became known as a technology node[17] or process node,[18][19] designated by the process' minimum feature size in nanometers (or historically micrometers) of the process's transistor gate length, such as the "90 nm process". However, this has not been the case since 1994,[20] and the number of nanometers used to name process nodes (see the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors) has become more of a marketing term that has no standardized relation with functional feature sizes or with transistor density (number of transistors per unit area).[21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_device_fabrication#Feature_size

personally, I don't care they try to simplify these extremely complicated chip layouts, but keep calling it X nanometers when there's nothing of that feature size is just plain misleading.

it doesnt mean what it traditionally mean since findett due yo the idea that finfett involves a folding process where its not necessarily a transistor in a traditional sense.

its the main reason what intel was conplaining about when it decided to rename its processes to be in lone with tsmc/samsung. Intel's 10nm process is actually a more dense pack of transitors than both TSMC's 7nm and Samsung's 8nm. so you have to make a stance, either TSMC/Samsung is over representing the definition, or Intel is underrepresenting it. because of it, either of the two actions need to happen:

TSMC/Samsung need to increase the number of their process because its illogical that a competitor has a more dense node with a higher number.

or

Intel renames their process with a lower number to better match its density when compared to TSMC/Samsung. Because Intel as a company only has the power to do this, this is what they did, and were underfire for it.

regardless, the nm stated in the nm does not represent what it used to traditionally mean, as whatever stance you have, some company is lying about their numbers.