ALBANY, NY — IBM has made working ultradense computer chips about four times the capacity of the most powerful chips available now and capable of a 50 percent power/performance boost. The 7nm (nanometer) node test chips could result in the ability to place more than 20 billion tiny switches — transistors — on the fingernail-sized chips that power everything from smartphones to spacecraft.
To achieve the higher performance, lower power and scaling benefits promised by 7nm technology, researchers had to bypass conventional semiconductor manufacturing approaches. It used silcon germanium (SiGe) channel transistors and extreme ultraviolet lithography at multiple levers, among other novel techniques.
The breakthrough, accomplished in partnership with GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung at SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY Poly CNSE).
Many industry experts see 7nm tech as crucial for future demands of cloud computing, big data systems, cognitive computing and mobile products.
“For business and society to get the most out of tomorrow’s computers and devices, scaling to 7nm and beyond is essential,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president and director of IBM Research said in a statement. “That’s why IBM has remained committed to an aggressive basic research agenda that continually pushes the limits of semiconductor technology.
Microprocessors utilizing 22nm and 14nm technology power today’s servers, cloud data centers and mobile devices, and 10nm technology is well on the way to becoming a mature technology. In electronics, of course, smaller is better.
The company says that its new techiques could result in at least a 50 percent power/performance improvement for the next generation of mainframe and power systems.
IBM has a significant presence in the Triangle.
