IBM Announces New Processor Breaktrhrough

[steve_bank]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/06/tech/ibm-semiconductor-two-nanometer/index.html

IBM says it has created the world's smallest and most powerful microchip

New York (CNN Business)The semiconductor industry's constant challenge is to make microchips that are smaller, faster, more powerful and more energy efficient — simultaneously.
On Thursday, IBM (IBM) announced it has created a 2-nanometer chip, the smallest, most powerful microchip yet developed

 

[excreationist]

Wow that's a big jump in nanometers!

 

[Jayjay]

Not really a huge step. The "nanometers" have nothing to do with actual dimensions anymore (they used to, but semiconductor manufacturers started exaggerating their numbers until they became just a naming convention for each manufacturer's process generation). What's important is transistor density. IBM's chip has about 333 million transistors per square millimeter; currently the best process in use is about 170 million.

So this is about twice as dense as the best chips in production. But it's not itself in production, it's a research project. You can bet that what Intel, Samsung or TSMC has in their labs isn't far behind.

More info: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16656/ibm-creates-first-2nm-chip

 

[Swammerdami]

I'm old enough to remember the mid-1970's when the San Jose Mercury-News sent a photographer out for a picture of a large cabinet. That single cabinet had a whopping 8 Megabytes of high-speed memory inside; this had never been done before. (IIRC each memory bit used three transistors.)

 

[none]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/06/tech/ibm-semiconductor-two-nanometer/index.html

IBM says it has created the world's smallest and most powerful microchip

New York (CNN Business)The semiconductor industry's constant challenge is to make microchips that are smaller, faster, more powerful and more energy efficient — simultaneously.
On Thursday, IBM (IBM) announced it has created a 2-nanometer chip, the smallest, most powerful microchip yet developed

I prefer prophylactics.

 

[Jayjay]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/06/tech/ibm-semiconductor-two-nanometer/index.html

IBM says it has created the world's smallest and most powerful microchip

New York (CNN Business)The semiconductor industry's constant challenge is to make microchips that are smaller, faster, more powerful and more energy efficient — simultaneously.
On Thursday, IBM (IBM) announced it has created a 2-nanometer chip, the smallest, most powerful microchip yet developed

I prefer prophylactics.

It's not nearly as effective as being a semiconductor nerd, IBM research shows. The development of the 2nm microchip reduced chances of sexually transmitted diseases by 150% more than wearing a condom.

 

[steve_bank]

Smaller features means more transistors and more chips per blank wafer meaning lower cost per chip. 'Die SAhrink'.

Even without adding more capability periodic die shrinks lowered cost.

Increasing speed while minimizing power is an accomplishment. That is always the goal.

 

[Jayjay]

Smaller features means more transistors and more chips per blank wafer meaning lower cost per chip. 'Die SAhrink'.

Not necessarily. Shrinking the transistors usually means higher error rate (at least in the beginning), which leads to smaller number of working chips per wafer which drives up the cost. Intel in particular has been struggling with this, which is one of the reasons AMD has been able to pull ahead in recent years.

 

[steve_bank]

Smaller features means more transistors and more chips per blank wafer meaning lower cost per chip. 'Die SAhrink'.

Not necessarily. Shrinking the transistors usually means higher error rate (at least in the beginning), which leads to smaller number of working chips per wafer which drives up the cost. Intel in particular has been struggling with this, which is one of the reasons AMD has been able to pull ahead in recent years.

When I was around it processes were rated in defects per unit area of the wafer. Defects on the wafer and contamination like airborne particles. Shrink the die in oen sense increases quantity oher things being equal.

There were occasional problems with shrunk chips in production. Sometimes they did not meet performance specs of the earlier part and specs were changed causing user manufacturing problems. In one case we had to search for older parts to keep a product going.

I was a systems reliability engineer at Intel in Hillsborough Or in the 80s. I was involved in chip failure analysis with failures during reliability tests.

 

[Shadowy Man]

What’s the big deal? Bill Gates has already made microchips small enough to fit in a vaccine!

 

[barbos]

Not really a huge step. The "nanometers" have nothing to do with actual dimensions anymore (they used to, but semiconductor manufacturers started exaggerating their numbers until they became just a naming convention for each manufacturer's process generation)

nanometers is usually related to the the smallest feature of the transistors, usually length of the gate. Transistors itself have different proportions for different manufacturers. Good metric is the density of the static memory.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I am waiting for someone to invent an SDD technology that gives SSDs a longer useful lifespan. And to use better chip technology to create USB 3.1 flash drives that don't run hot as firecrackers. And better batteries for things like MP3 players that last about 2 years and crap out.

 

[Treedbear]

I am waiting for someone to invent an SDD technology that gives SSDs a longer useful lifespan. ...

Is that a big issue? SSD vs. HDD Noise, Power, and Lifespan -

While it is true that SSDs wear out over time (each cell in a flash-memory bank can be written to and erased a limited number of times, measured by SSD makers as a "terabytes written" or TBW rating), thanks to TRIM command technology that dynamically optimizes these read/write cycles, you're more likely to discard the system for obsolescence before you start running into read/write errors with an SSD. If you're really worried, several tools can let you know if you're approaching the drive's rated end of life.

 

[Jayjay]

Not really a huge step. The "nanometers" have nothing to do with actual dimensions anymore (they used to, but semiconductor manufacturers started exaggerating their numbers until they became just a naming convention for each manufacturer's process generation)

nanometers is usually related to the the smallest feature of the transistors, usually length of the gate. Transistors itself have different proportions for different manufacturers. Good metric is the density of the static memory.

The "nanometers" in the process node name these days don't refer to any feature size. It's just a marketing term. You are right that it used to refer to gate length, but that hasn't been the case since 28-32nm process nodes.

 

[barbos]

Not really a huge step. The "nanometers" have nothing to do with actual dimensions anymore (they used to, but semiconductor manufacturers started exaggerating their numbers until they became just a naming convention for each manufacturer's process generation)

nanometers is usually related to the the smallest feature of the transistors, usually length of the gate. Transistors itself have different proportions for different manufacturers. Good metric is the density of the static memory.

The "nanometers" in the process node name these days don't refer to any feature size. It's just a marketing term. You are right that it used to refer to gate length, but that hasn't been the case since 28-32nm process nodes.

I am not saying that process nanometers directly equal to the length of the gate. Modern transistors are more complicated than in the past and you need more control over the process to make a relatively big (compared to process number) gate.
Intel 10nm process have the same transistor density as TSMC 7nm process. But TSMC have finer gates which results in better performance in terms of speed and power consumption. Intel has always been known for high transistor density.
They need to use transistor density for process description.