IBM unveils 2-nanometre chip technology for faster computing

For decades, each generation of computerchips gotfasterand more power-efficient because their most basic building blocks, called transistors, got smaller.

The pace of those improvements has slowed, but International Business Machines Corp on Thursday said that silicon has at least one more generational advance in store.

IBMintroduced what it says is the world's first 2-nanomere chipmakingtechnology. Thetechnologycould be as much as 45%fasterthan the mainstream 7-nanometre chips in many of today's laptops and phones and up to 75% more power efficient, the company said.

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Thetechnologylikely will take several years to come to market. Once a major manufacturer ofchips,IBMnow outsources its high-volumechipproduction to Samsung Electronics Co Ltd but maintains achipmanufacturing research centre in Albany, New York that produces test runs ofchips and has jointtechnologydevelopment deals with Samsung and Intel Corp to useIBM'schipmakingtechnology.

The 2-nanometre chips will be smaller andfasterthan today's leading edge 5-nanonmetre chips, which are just now showing up in premium smartphones like Apple Inc's iPhone 12 models, and the 3-nanometre chips expected to come after 5-nanometre.

ThetechnologyIBMshowed on Thursday is the most basic building block of achip: a transistor, which acts like an electrical on-off switch to form the 1s and 0s of binary digits at that foundation of all moderncomputing.

Making the switches very tiny makes themfasterand more power efficient, but it also creates problems with electrons leaking when the switches are supposed to be off. Darío Gil, senior vice president and director ofIBMResearch, told Reuters in an interview that scientists were able to drape sheets of insulating material just a fewnanometers thick to stop leaks.

"In the end, there's transistors, and everything else (incomputing) relies on whether that transistor gets better or not. And it's not a guarantee that there will be a transistor advance generation to generation anymore. So it's a big deal every time we get a chance to say there will be another," Gil said.