IBM Research announced a major breakthrough on Thursday, saying it’s built the world’s first fully-functional 7 nanometer node test chips, in conjunction with partners GlobalFoundries In., Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., and the SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.
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In response to a query from V3, IBM would say only that the technology is being developed in close collaboration with its semiconductor manufacturing partners and the introduction timescale depends on various product timelines.
A key issue will be whether IBM can bring its technology to commercial production, said Roger Kay, an analyst at Endpoint Technologies.
Mukesh Khare, IBM’s head of semiconductor research, told Quartz that the breakthrough didn’t come easily.
For decades, transistors have gotten smaller, allowing for more powerful computer chips to be created.
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. Instead of pure silicon, the new chip is made using a silicon germanium alloy. It also had to develop new manufacturing processes to achieve working transistors.
IBM no longer manufactures its own chips.
IBM is also looking at the possibility of using a 3D chip stack that utilises carbon nanotubes to vastly improve computer chips.
This would make them the first 7nm chip and they appear to use Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV) and silicon germanium (SiGe).
The new chips are some of the first to be made with 7 nanometer transistors – half the size of those commonly used today, reports TIME.
One outsider to IBM’s venture explained why the company was moving ahead with developing their new chips.
IBM said that this latest milestone is the fruit of a billion, five-year investment in chip research and development that the company announced last year. Pursuing such small dimensions through conventional processes has degraded chip performance and negated the expected benefits of scaling – higher performance, less cost and lower power requirements.
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The pace of software and startup innovation only seems to be accelerating, but tech industry stalwarts like IBM continue to work behind the scenes to keep things quietly moving forward.
