Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.
We only have semiconductors because of space.
Well, yea. But that stuff came from supernovae many billion years ago. We don't need space now to have semiconductors since that stuff, particular silicon won't go anywhere.
I suspect however that you are thinking that the US space program is responsible for semiconductors. That is nonsense. We would have them anyway even in the absence of contributions from any agency of the US including the Department of Defense (who was a far bigger contributor to IC R&D than NASA was by at least an order of magnitude). And the incentives to develop integrated circuits and CPUs would have resulted in pretty much what we have now, perhaps even further along since so the careers of so many intelligence,educated people were squandered on various white elephants between NASA and the US military.
The field effect transistor was invented in the 1920s. Point-contact transistors date from 1947, and conventional junction transistors from the 1950s.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
$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.
And they're gonna make 'em the width of 16 opossums layed side by side!
solid state *integrated circuit* tech was made for missile (defense and space) use first. Space program has indeed been a driver for that.
The original Dutch settlers there named it "vis kill", or "fish creek". It's been anglicized.
you are posting nonsense, with a link to a system in F-14. You are decades off. No, original solid state integrated circuits made at Texas Instruments were used in ICBM in late 50s
Space tech has driven electronic advances