IBM is heralding the return of Moore’s Law—the idea that the power of microchips will double every two years—with a new chip design that fits 50 billion transistors on a piece of silicon the size of your thumbnail.
The new chip is the result of a mind-bogglingly tiny 2-nanometer technology, where each transistor is less than 2 nanometers wide, or about the width of two strands of human DNA. It was designed at IBM’s research lab in Albany, New York. (By way of comparison, Apple’s iPhone 12 and Samsung’s Galaxy S21 phones use 5-nanometer chips.)
With greater transistor density, each chip has more processing power and will require less power to run. This will have big implications for the tech product makers that use the chips. IBM says the new chips could make everything from phones to smart appliances to self-driving cars run more efficiently.
Intel cofounder Gordon Moore proclaimed in 1965 that the number of transistors on a microprocessor will double roughly every two years, meaning that processors would grow twice as fast every two years. This held true for the next 50 years, but in the past decade the maxim failed to match reality.
In 2014, recognizing that Moore’s Law was coming to an end, IBM announced a new program called “7nm and Beyond,” in which it committed to spend $3 billion over the next five years to bring new techniques and materials to bear to generate ever-smaller silicon dimensions.
Well before the 2-nanometer chips are in production, engineers at tech companies will start creating product designs that utilize the additional power and better efficiency, IBM senior VP and research director Dario Gil told me on Thursday.
The chips will start showing up in real products in late 2024 or 2025, Gil says.
May 07, 2021 at 06:00PM
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IBM's new 2-nanometer chips will show up in products by 2025 - Fast Company
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