IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology

Posted by porridgeraisin 5 hours ago

IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology(newsroom.ibm.com)

110 points | 66 commentspage 2

applfanboysbgon 3 hours ago|

For anyone who needs it, a friendly reminder that CPU nm marketing is a complete fabrication and the physical size of transistors has zero relation to the marketing claims. These are not, in fact, physically sub 1 nm, despite the bombastic claims.

lp4v4n 2 hours ago||

>These are not, in fact, physically sub 1 nm, despite the bombastic claims.

Why? What's their real size?

Not doubting you, just trying to understand and also trying to assess how exaggerated the marketing is.

CAP_NET_ADMIN 2 hours ago|||

At some point in the transistor scaling, the electrons started leaking across the gate, we've switched from 2D design to 3D structures to prevent that, so the actual physical gate pitch for like the TSMC 3nm is around 45 nm in distance.

Currently thrown around numbers mean the "equivalent performance/density" or something like that.

applfanboysbgon 2 hours ago|||

They don't describe the exact physical size (that would rather defeat the point of the marketing), but you can see the photographs at the bottom have a scale measured in tens of nm.

wmf 2 hours ago|||

The marketing nm better represent the density and performance of the transistors than the actual feature size, especially in this case.

micw 3 hours ago||

So the title should be corrected. The did not debut sub nm chips at all.

antisthenes 2 hours ago||

That ship sailed long ago. I think it was around 32nm-22nm node when the marketing term started diverging from the physical feature size.

ginko 3 hours ago||

IBM regularly announces silicon breakthroughs like this but I'm not aware of those ever becoming products. Is IBM mainly in the business of licensing their technology to big silicon manufacturers with stuff like this? Is it just marketing for their consulting business?

vessenes 3 hours ago||

My understanding is they are largely an IP business. That said this release mentioned an ASML machine on prem, so?

ijidak 3 hours ago|||

IBM's contributions to computing hardware and software are incalculable.

So many breakthroughs in hard drives, chips, transistor density, and other aspects of computing have come out of their labs.

Great to see them continuing to innovate.

But, yeah, usually they partner and license. Over the years, they've spun off more and more of their hardware businesses.

petra 2 hours ago|||

It's great that they found a working business model for a pure r&d lab, and with such awesome results.

I wonder why isn't this more common.

bruckie 2 hours ago|||

Don't forget copper interconnects for ICs. https://www.chiphistory.org/ibm-s-development-of-copper-inte...

AnimalMuppet 3 hours ago||

I believe that IBM makes the chips for their Z Series mainframes. I mean, that's low volume production, but they need small feature size.

nradov 3 hours ago||

IBM Z series mainframe Telum CPUs are designed by IBM but manufactured by Samsung. IBM no longer owns any fabs. I assume they have some kind of technology licensing deal.

https://www.ibm.com/products/z/telum

ac29 2 hours ago||

> IBM no longer owns any fabs

Per IBM: "IBM Research at Albany [...] includes more than 100,000 square feet of semiconductor fabrication space"

I guess that is technically a R&D fab not a production one, but they definitely have in house fabrication capability

topspin 2 hours ago||

It's a lab. It's where ASML brings up the prototype machine and gets it working, with IBM talent working out the problems and getting it ready for commercial operation. They won't make chips at scale there: the facility isn't designed for that part. The thing to understand here is that isn't a simple, clean, comprehensible business arrangement. The Albany facility is highly subsidized by the state. IBM has their hooks deep in the operation and occupation of the site. Such facilities are extraordinary with capabilities that talent that are unique and fabulously expensive. That's why ASML is there, and not just doing it in some village in the Netherlands. It's why when Obama, Biden, Trump or whomever tells ASML to whom they will and won't be selling hardware, ASML listens.

petcat 1 hour ago||

> It's why when Obama, Biden, Trump or whomever tells ASML to whom they will and won't be selling hardware, ASML listens.

My understanding is that ASML's acquisition of Cymer in California (the actual EUV light source technology) in 2014 was only permitted under a strict technology sharing and export agreement with the US government. And that the technology development and production had to remain within the US.

The USA CHIPS Act and NY State have provided $100 billion+ in funding with the expectation that ASML's core R&D and "prototyping" like this will be done in the US in partnership with US companies (like IBM).

mxuribe 3 hours ago|

A little bit of a nitpick, but wouldn't that be a picometer instead of angstrom node? Like, isn't a "pico-" the next magnitude smaller than "nano-", or am i wrong?

Otherwise, that chip tech sounds really awesome - at least for the future!

saulpw 3 hours ago||

There are 3 orders of magnitude between nano (^-9) and pico (^-12). An Angstrom is ^-10m.

1313ed01 2 hours ago|||

Useless fact I just learned from Wikipedia: Ångström/Angstrom (in Sweden of course we still use the original spelling) has its own UNICODE symbol, Angstrom sign: Å (U+212B) not to confuse with the Swedish letter Å (U+00C5). Looks slightly different in my browser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angstrom

nielsbot 2 hours ago||

Looks like that's deprecated. From the next sentence:

However, version 5 of the standard already deprecates that code point and has it normalized into the code for the Swedish letter U+00C5 Å `latin capital letter a with ring above`

mxuribe 3 hours ago|||

Aaahhh, ok, thanks!

applfanboysbgon 2 hours ago||

You had the right idea. Angstroms are not an SI unit. The SI units jump by three orders of magnitude at this scale: picometer, nanometer, micrometer, millimeter.

(In the same way that meter jumps three orders of magnitude to kilometer[1], or millions to billions to trillions, etc.)

[1] Technically there are intermediate SI units between meter and km but nobody uses them. There are not intermediate SI units between the tiny ones.

SoftTalker 2 hours ago||

Why above 1mm do we go by tens instead of thousands?

We have centimeter (10 mm) then decimeter (100mm) then meter (1000mm). Then we jump to thousand again (kilometer).

floxy 2 hours ago|||

>We have centimeter (10 mm) then decimeter (100mm)

Does anyone actually use those? I think I would throw up a little in my mouth if I saw either of those on a mechanical drawing.

mikko856 1 hour ago||

Centimeter is the commonly used metric for small distances in everyday parlance, just like an inch.

topspin 2 hours ago||||

Answer that question and you'll get the whole impetus for logarithmic scales.

applfanboysbgon 2 hours ago|||

Everyday necessity. The gap between mm and m is too large, there are many things in daily life that are better expressed in cm. SI units must strike a balance between three factors: not having so many denominations nobody can remember them; not having so few denominations that using them adds too much wordiness to daily life (150mm or 0.15m are wordier than 15cm); and a degree of familiarity with the everyday units people used before metric, to smooth the transition and encourage adoption.

Romario77 2 hours ago|||

Because 1 angstrom equals 10⁻¹⁰ meters and 1 picometer equals 10⁻¹² meters, the relationship is:

1 Å = 100 pm. 1 pm = 0.01 Å.

TallGuyShort 2 hours ago||

1 picometer = 0.001 nanometers, 0.01 angstrom

1 angstrom = 0.1 nanometers, 100 picometers

1 nanometer = 10 angstroms, 1000 picometers