IBM Opens A New Frontier For Semiconductors, Unveils World’s First 2 Nanometer Chip Technology

IBM today unveiled the development of the world’s first chip announced with 2 nanometer (nm) nanosheet technology. According to reports, new 2 nm chip technology helps advance the state-of-the-art in the semiconductor industry, addressing the growing demand for increased chip performance and energy efficiency.

The 2 nm chip is claimed to achieve 45 per cent higher performance, or 75 per cent lower energy use, than today’s most advanced 7 nm node chips. The potential benefits of these advanced 2 nm chips could include:

• Quadrupling cell phone battery life: The quadrupling cell phone battery life allows users to charge their devices every four days
• Slashing the carbon footprint of data centres: Slashing the carbon footprint of data centres that account for one per cent of global energy use. Changing all of their servers to 2 nm-based processors could potentially reduce that number significantly.
• Drastically speeding up a laptop's functions: Ranging from quicker processing in applications to assisting in language translation more easily, to faster internet access.
• Contributing to faster object detection and reaction time in autonomous vehicles like self-driving cars.

Commenting on the same, Darío Gil, SVP and Director of IBM Research said, “The IBM innovation reflected in this new 2 nm chip is essential to the entire semiconductor and IT industry.” “It is the product of IBM’s approach of taking on hard tech challenges and a demonstration of how breakthroughs can result from sustained investments and a collaborative R&D ecosystem approach,” Gil added.

The 2 nm design demonstrates the advanced scaling of semiconductors using IBM’s nanosheet technology. Developed less than four years after IBM announced its milestone 5 nm design, this latest breakthrough will allow the 2 nm chip to fit up to 50 billion transistors on a chip the size of a fingernail.