Chip Miniaturization Lives On

IBM says it has found a way to keep shrinking the technology inside chips. Industry leaders had worried that innovations in chip miniaturization were no longer possible.

For decades, the tech industry has relied on the ability of semiconductor companies to wring more power out of computer chips, making the smartphones that fit in a hand today more capable than the computers that filled entire rooms 40 years ago.

While some experts worry that era of increased miniaturization is ending, IBM is saying not so fast.

The big tech company on Thursday released details of its next advance in chip manufacturing technology, which it says could keep that innovation going for another 10 years.

Using a novel approach to making smaller transistors that act as tiny switches in microprocessors and other chips, IBM said, the new production process can squeeze nearly twice as many transistors on a fingernail-size chip as the last technology it introduced in 2021. That will offer 50 percent greater computing performance and 70 percent better energy efficiency, the company said.

Both attributes are in hot demand, particularly in the race to build data centers for artificial intelligence. Power is a particularly severe constraint, with energy-hungry A.I. chips in some cases causing construction delays for builders that can’t secure affordable electricity.

“Everyone demands more performance, but no one wants to pay for the power,” Huiming Bu, an IBM vice president who leads chip research and development, said in a briefing with reporters.

IBM, though a pioneer in semiconductors, doesn’t make or sell chips anymore. But engineers at its laboratory in Albany, N.Y., still develop new technology for turning silicon wafers into chips, which it typically licenses to manufacturers.

- Author: Don Clark, The New York Times

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