IBM unveils world's first 2 nanometer chip technology

Tech giant IBM on Thursday said it has developed the world's first chip with two nanometer (nm) nanosheet technology that promises to speed up access to the Internet, longer battery life and faster processing time in applications.

Semiconductors play a crucial role in everything, right from computers to appliances, communication devices, transportation systems to critical infrastructure.

According to IBM, the potential benefits of advanced 2 nm chips could include quadrupling of cell phone battery life, reduction in the carbon footprint of data centres, and drastically speed up a laptop's functions (including quicker processing in applications to assisting in language translation more easily and faster internet access).

The use of the new technology could also contribute to faster object detection and reaction time in autonomous vehicles like self-driving cars, it said in a statement.

The demand for increased chip performance and energy efficiency continues to rise, especially in the era of hybrid cloud, AI and the Internet of Things. ''IBM's new 2 nm chip technology helps advance the state-of-the-art in the semiconductor industry, addressing this growing demand. It is projected to achieve 45 per cent higher performance, or 75 per cent lower energy use, than today's most advanced 7 nm node chips,'' it said.

However, it is not clear by when 2 nm processors will make their way into consumer devices. Many of the top semiconductor companies are working with IBM as part of the ecosystem, which provides opportunities to collaborate on the development and deployment of this technology. As IBM develops new technologies, its partners -- including manufacturers -- will benefit.

IBM Research's innovations feed directly into its commercial product roadmap, and IBM's first commercialised 7 nm processor, based on IBM Research's 2015 breakthrough, will debut later this year in IBM POWER10. Currently, semiconductor manufacturing revolves majorly around 7 nm technology, as per the information shared by the company. IBM's semiconductor development efforts are based at its research lab located at the Albany Nanotech Complex in Albany, US, where IBM scientists work in close collaboration with public and private sector partners to push the boundaries of logic scaling and semiconductor capabilities. ''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," IBM Research Senior Vice President and Director Dario Gil said.

IBM's legacy of semiconductor breakthroughs also includes the first implementation of 7 nm and 5 nm process technologies, copper interconnect wiring, multi-core microprocessors and 3D chip stacking, among others. IBM said the 2 nm chip fits up to 50 billion transistors on a chip the size of a fingernail.

Increasing the number of transistors per chip can make them smaller, faster, more reliable, and more efficient. More transistors on a chip also mean processor designers have more options to infuse core-level innovations to improve capabilities for leading-edge workloads like AI and cloud computing, as well as new pathways for hardware-enforced security and encryption.

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