IBM has unveiled a breakthrough in semiconductor design with the development of the world's first chip announced with 2 nanometer (nm) nanosheet technology.
Developed less than four years after IBM announced its 5 nm design, this latest breakthrough will allow the 2 nm chip to fit up to 50 billion transistors on a chip the size of a fingernail.
More transistors on a chip also means processor designers have more options to improve capabilities for leading edge workloads like AI and cloud computing, as well as new pathways for hardware-enforced security and encryption.
The potential benefits of these advanced 2 nm chips could include:
- Quadrupling cell phone battery life, only requiring users to charge their devices every four daysii.
- Slashing the carbon footprint of data centers, which account for one percent of global energy useiii. Changing all of their servers to 2 nm-based processors could potentially reduce that number significantly.
- Drastically speeding up a laptop's functions, ranging from quicker processing in applications, to assisting in language translation more easily, to faster internet access.
- Contributing to faster object detection and reaction time in autonomous vehicles like self-driving cars.