That's my point: this seems to me more less exactly where we are now with "Intel 7" being their "10 nm but better-er" process and the previously-known-as-7nm becoming "Intel 4." They're saying, well, the actual nanometer number has long been a little wishy-washy anyway, so we're jettisoning the pretense that this is a measurement of anything in particular and just picking a number that sounds better and aligns with our competition's numbers.
And of course it's not just Intel marketing this way, everyone does, but their more recent naming change makes it more transparent. Tired of years of saying "welll, TSMC's Xnm (or X number with no units that's sort of implied to be nm) is really equivalent to our X+Ynm," they just go for marketing on parity.
Like I said in the start of my previous post, this isn't actually inflating (or deflating as the case may be) but it's just taking a concept that's widespread among the consumers as a proxy for quality/value and marketing to that idea rather than any actual physical characteristic.
And of course it's not just Intel marketing this way, everyone does, but their more recent naming change makes it more transparent. Tired of years of saying "welll, TSMC's Xnm (or X number with no units that's sort of implied to be nm) is really equivalent to our X+Ynm," they just go for marketing on parity.
Like I said in the start of my previous post, this isn't actually inflating (or deflating as the case may be) but it's just taking a concept that's widespread among the consumers as a proxy for quality/value and marketing to that idea rather than any actual physical characteristic.