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IBM To Invest $3 Billion For Semiconductor Research
Taco Cowboy points out that many news outlets are reporting that IBM plans to spend $3 billion on semiconductor research and development in the next five years. The first goal is to build chips whose electronic components, called transistors, have features measuring just 7 nanometers, the company announced Wednesday. For comparison, that distance is about a thousandth the width of a human hair, a tenth the width of a virus particle, or the width of 16 potassium atoms side by side. The second goal is to choose among a range of more radical departures from today's silicon chip technology -- a monumental engineering challenge necessary to sustain progress in the computing industry. Among the options are carbon nanotubes and graphene; silicon photonics; quantum computing; brainlike architectures; and silicon substitutes that could run faster even if components aren't smaller. "In the next 10 years, we believe there will be fundamentally new systems that are much more efficient at solving problems or solving problems that are unsolvable today," T.C. Chen, IBM Research's vice president of science and technology, told CNET
> ".. whose electronic components, called transistors .."
? what is this strange thing called "trenseeestooor"? Is it a small demon that lives in our iPads that herds the pixies that make our iPads work?
The first goal is to build chips whose electronic components, called transistors, have features measuring just 7 nanometers, the company announced Wednesday. For comparison, that distance is about a thousandth the width of a human hair, a tenth the width of a virus particle, or the width of 16 potassium atoms side by side.
I'm pretty sure slashdot users who care about semiconductor announcements already have a sense of scale of transistors, so don't need this layman dumbing down. For reference, this is about half the size of Intels latest process.
"IBM petitions Congress for increased H1B quota to support semiconductor research."
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
This type of research actually takes very specific talents and long periods of education and study (like a PhD in semi conductor physics). Meaning, any H1-bs they get for this is actually legitimate - and the people they get probably won't even fall under the H1-b program anyway.
What have semiconductors been bringing us lately, besides the newest social apps and web-enabled office-collaboration bloatware?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
This summary is targeted towards more of a layman's audience. I would imagine most Slashdot readers know that a transistor is an electrical component and that current technologies like Intel's Broadwell chips are at 14 nm. Really the title gives all the necessary information sans the tech jargon business fluff. I guess the question is if some of IBM's money is going to help ARM again.
IBM chipfabs are a decade out of date. What they want is the patent portfolio and the people who created it. When IBM says they will 'invest' what they mean is that they will pay GF to design and make their chips for them.
We only have semiconductors because of space. If you want new chips, we need, NEED, to send people to the Moon or Mars!
She's been driving IBM into the ground and even investors wonder if you can continue to cut your way to earnings. IBM used to be a company that could and would compete in any market it chose, now it's a shell of its former self. Sad really when you think of the great things IBM has done, and the not so great.
They've started entire industries and markets only to see them taken away by competitors because their executives weren't agile. In a lot of respects I think IBM will be gone in 10 years because of retarded management decision making and focusing too much on EPS.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
well, 16 potassium atoms, well that clears things up.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I thought they outsourced everything and laid off the rest of the company. Who's going to do the work.
Go to hell, QC. Nobody likes your crap. Go troll 4chan.
$3B doesn't go a long way if you want to play with the big boys in semiconductor research.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
QC? The entire province of Québec? Or just Québec City? Or maybe Quality Control? The hell with Quality Control!
And I don't like the crap that we only have technology because of space. Take that fantasy to hell as well.
The original Dutch settlers there named it "vis kill", or "fish creek". It's been anglicized.
Just skip the 7nanometer step. No one needs such a meager improvement in performance as the one the most optimistic projections associate with 7nm. Storage and space expenditure out paces compute 10:1 at least for the vast majority of applications.
Just do the real basic research already. It's at least a decade behind most labs and with today's patent laws you can lock down 30 years of industrial monopoly with a truly new approch.
Carbon Nanotubes: Graphene in a different shape, extremely similar challenges.
Graphene: What everyone's doing anyway. Clockspeeds in excess of hundreds of gigahertz here we come!
Silicon Photonics: Actually much easier to do with graphene anyway.
Quantum computing: I doubt most people want liquid helium laying around there servers just to cool quibits into stable memory states.
Brain like architectures: The brain is fantastically similar to an FPGA, we already have those.
Silicon Substitutes: You mean like graphene?
Still, nice to know they won't just abandon it yet. With both Intel and TSMC missing the two year mark on their next silicon process shrink Moore's law is essentially already dead, and they're almost the only two companies even still competing in process shrinks or cutting edge silicon fab at all.