This archive report was first published on 10 May 2021.
On May 10, 2021, IBM unveiled a groundbreaking innovation in semiconductor design and process with the development of the world’s first chip announced with 2 nanometer (nm) nanosheet technology.
IBM’s new 2 nm chip technology is a significant advancement in the semiconductor industry, addressing the growing demand for increased chip performance and energy efficiency. This breakthrough is expected to achieve 45 percent higher performance, or 75 percent lower energy use, than today’s most advanced 7 nm node chips.
The potential benefits of these advanced 2 nm chips are vast, including quadrupling cell phone battery life, slashing the carbon footprint of data centers, drastically speeding up laptop functions, and contributing to faster object detection and reaction time in autonomous vehicles.
“The IBM innovation reflected in this new 2 nm chip is essential to the entire semiconductor and IT industry,” said Darío Gil, SVP and Director of IBM Research. “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’s legacy of semiconductor breakthroughs includes the first implementation of 7 nm and 5 nm process technologies, single cell DRAM, the Dennard Scaling Laws, chemically amplified photoresists, copper interconnect wiring, Silicon on Insulator technology, multi core microprocessors, High-k gate dielectrics, embedded DRAM, and 3D chip stacking.
The 2 nm design demonstrates the advanced scaling of semiconductors using IBM’s nanosheet technology, which will allow the 2 nm chip to fit up to 50 billion transistors on a chip the size of a fingernail.
