IBM's fingernail-sized chip squeezes in ~100 billion transistors

IBM has developed the blueprint for producing a processor using sub-1-nanometer (nm) chip technology, outdoing its own efforts to increase efficiency and processing power with 2-nm tech from a few years ago.

The 1-nm figure isn't really an accurate measure of the size of transistors anymore. That part of the name of a process node (or chip manufacturing technique) used to refer to the physical gate length of a transistor.

This brief video below explains how that's changed over the years. The key takeaway is that transistors are now three-dimensional and can't be measured the same way as previous generations. What is a lot more important now is transistor density, or how many chips you can fit on to a single chip of a particular size.

The semiconductor giant says it's now managed to cram nearly 100 billion tiny transistors on to a chip the size of a human fingernail. That's close to double the transistors on the same-sized chip using its 2-nm node from 2021.

With greater transistor density, electrons have a lot less distance to travel between transistors that switch on and off to process data. According to IBM, this has resulted in up to 50% percent more performance, and 70% greater energy efficiency than its 2-nm-node chips.

Once implemented in new processors, this should boost the speed and capabilities of all kinds of tech, from generative AI services to phones to cloud infrastructure.

The 1-nm-process node uses a new transistor architecture the company is calling 'nanostack.' Instead of only fitting more transistors on to the chip's surface horizontally, this additionally uses different combinations of materials stacked on top of each in a 3D sequential configuration. You can see what this looks like in the diagram below, where a transistor is shown consisting of three nanosheet elements – each of which comprise just 15 rows of silicon atoms.

It's one thing to crack the technology, but entirely another to be able to produce chips with said technology at scale. Taiwanese chip manufacturing giant TSMC only began volume production of 2-nm chips at the end of last year. IBM's manufacturing partner, Rapidus, hopes to get on board the 2-nm train about a year from now.

In the consumer electronics world, Bloomberg reports that Apple has plans to introduce a 2-nm chip using TSMC's process – the M6 – for a powerful MacBook Pro laptop model sometime this year.

Moving to a new process node takes a lot of work, from identifying suitable materials to engineering new lithography tools to achieving sufficient yield of usable chips from the assembly line. IBM itself says 1 nm production is at least five years away, so be prepared to wait a while for next-gen chips in your personal devices.

Source: IBM