First 7-nanometre node test chips with — IBM breakthrough

The tech giant has recently unveiled the world’s first 7-nanometer chip and says that this will boost computing power from smartphones all the way up to spacecraft.

The IBM Research-led alliance bypassed the conventional manufacturing approaches used by the semiconductor industry to achieve the higher performance, lower power and scaling benefits promised by the 7nm technology.

Currently, leading chipmakers like Intel and TSMC are on the verge of producing 10nm chips, so IBM’s breakthrough represents a leapfrog to the next generation of chips. And the best computer chips available now have transistors that are 14 nanometers across. It’s worth noting that the chips are in advanced research stage, as opposed to being consumer-ready, but that doesn’t detract from the announcement. (NASDAQ: INTC) chairman Gordon Moore, the law is based on Moore’s observation that the number of transistors on a chip had doubled about every two years since the invention of the integrated circuit.

The move was made official in IBM’s quarterly earnings figures released in October previous year, and will see IBM ridding itself of a business unit that has become more trouble than it’s worth.

IBM has created a fully functional version of the most powerful computer chip yet, Ars Technica reports. Intel, TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and Samsung and now producing 10 nanometer chips for commercial use, so it is much too early to guess when IBM’s lates discovery could hit mass production. It also employed Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography to etch the microscopic patterns into each chip. Then there’s the longer term issue that smaller chips are probably going to require a completely new and hitherto unknown method of production using alternative materials. Even though IBM sold off its manufacturing, it is spending $3 billion over five years on chip advances that will be manufactured by GlobalFoundries at its Fab 8 chip factory in Malta.

Industry experts believed that the 7nm technology is critical to meeting the anticipated future demands of Big Data systems, cloud computing, cognitive computing, mobile products and other emerging technologies.