IBM announced that it has taken a big step in chip development with the construction of the first 2 nm integrated circuit. According to the company, 50 billion transistors have been integrated in an area comparable to that of a nail.
The new architecture can help processor manufacturers create components that offer a 45 percent increase in performance while maintaining the same power consumption as a 7 nm chip, or the same level of performance while consuming 75% less energy. However, it is expected that when this new architecture is adopted by the various manufacturers, an attempt will be made to strike a balance between performance and energy consumption.
Mobile devices that come to use 2nm chips, can achieve battery life times between charges 4 times higher than devices with 7 nm chips. According to IBM, new devices should only need to be loaded every 4 days. Laptops will be faster and autonomous vehicles will be able to detect and react to obstacles more quickly. But the advantages do not lie with consumer technology, because these new chips can make data centers more energy efficient and benefit from space exploration, artificial intelligence, 5 and 6G networks and quantum computing.
This announcement from IBM means that the ‘big blue’ has managed to get ahead of the competition. Apple’s M1 chip, launched at the end of last year, was the first processor to be manufactured using TSMC’s 5 nm technology. Other manufacturers, such as AMD and Qualcomm, are still using TSMC’s 7 nm manufacturing method as well. Intel, on the other hand, is still using 10 and 14 nm manufacturing methods in its products and is only expected to launch its first 7 nm chips in 2023. In the meantime, TSMC is working on its 2 nm process and is expected to to start manufacturing 4nm and 3nm components next year.
It is not yet known when the 2 nm chips will reach the consumer market and how do you know: announcing that the technology already exists and manufacturing it in large quantities are completely different things. IBM plans to integrate its first 7 nm chips this year into the Power Systems server range.
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