The microchip industry has consistently created smaller and more powerful semiconductors.
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At the 7-nanometer range, not far off from the width of a human hair (roughly 2.5 nanometers in diameter), the traditional physics around silicon transistors must be approached differently.
Indeed, IBM suggest that processors with more than 20 billion transistors should be a possibility-about four times that of today’s best chips.
Creating a working 7nm chip required moving past pure silicon, IBM revealed. However, if IBM can use their research at 7nm to develop a commercially viable manufacturing process, they might just be able to beat traditional process node leader Intel, who are now working on mass production at 10nm, to market. With this type of chip in your smart phone you don’t need to connect to cloud for many complex computations.
Th IBM Research Alliance takes credit for this on a team basis, noting that GlobalFoundries and Samsung are other companies involved, and that the SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Albany NanoTech facility, as well as equipment makers, are key partners in the achievement.
In 1965, Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, predicted the number of tiny electrical switches that could be placed on a computer chip, called transistors, would double approximately every two years.
The firm is making a big push to reduce the size of transistors and other microscopic components on its fingernail-sized chips, following a trend of increasing computer power known as Moore’s Law.
This isn’t the primary time that IBM has dipped below the 10nm bar with its analysis into future chip technology, the corporate demonstrated 9nm transistors engineered out of carbon nanotubes in 2012.
IBM still plans to come out with its 10-nanometer Power processors, the design for which was revealed at last year’s 2014 worldwide Symposium on VLSI Technology and Applications, probably in 2016. It was still an important step extending Moore’s Law and its promise of steady progress in the computer industry. This breakthrough demonstration should also keep IBM on-track in delivering its next-generation Power 8+ next year and it Power-9 processors the year after, manufactured for it by GlobalFoundries.
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This would make them the first 7nm chip and they appear to use Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV) and silicon germanium (SiGe). But IBM said it used new semiconductor processes and techniques pioneered by IBM Research. ‘The question is not if we will introduce 7 nanometre technology into manufacturing, but rather how, when, and at what cost, ‘ explained John Kelly, senior vice president at IBM Research, at the time.
