IBM unveils technology for chips that promise higher performance, use much less power

Source Domain: www.cbsnews.com

IBM unveiled semiconductor technology Thursday that it says could deliver computer chips with 50 percent better performance while dramatically lowering power consumption.

The technology developed by IBM isn’t ready for industrial use yet, but the Armonk, New York-based company said it “sees a path to production in as early as the next five years.”

The breakthrough could mean a major leap forward as the industry races to cram more computing power into smaller devices even as worries grow over the tech industry’s huge energy needs.

Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s leading chip manufacturer, has recently begun mass-producing “2-nanometer” chips, the current cutting edge of the industry.

IBM’s new “0.7-nanometer” technology would represent a dramatic step beyond that.

The nanometer, an atomic-scale unit of measurement, doesn’t refer to the literal size of chips or their components, but to how densely transistors — the tiny electronic switches that make up processors — can be packed together.

The smaller the number, the more transistors can fit on a chip the size of a fingernail.

IBM’s apparent breakthrough packs nearly 100 billion transistors onto a chip that size — nearly twice the density of the 2-nanometer chip.

More transistors mean faster and more powerful computing and can help drive advances like faster smartphones and laptops, more efficient data centers, better self-driving cars, and more capable artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT.

IBM’s new chip is projected to offer “up to 50 percent more performance, or 70 percent greater energy efficiency than IBM’s 2-nanometer node chips,” the company said.

That’s considered a critical advantage as data centers worldwide grapple with artificial intelligence’s enormous power demands, with local communities expressing increasing worry over the consequences of the facilities.