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IBM Beats The Rest of the World To 7nm Chips, But You'll Need to Wait For Them

Posted by timothy on from the out-of-the-big-blue dept.

Mickeycaskill writes: IBM's research division has successfully produced test chips containing 7nm transistors, potentially paving the way for slimmer, more powerful devices. The advance was made possible by using silicon-germanium instead of pure silicon in key regions of the molecular-size switches, making transistor switching faster and meaning the chips need less power. Most current smartphones use processors containing 14nm technology, with Qualcomm, Nvidia and MediaTek looking for ways to create slimmer chips. However, despite its evident pride, IBM is not saying when the 7nm technology will become commercially available. Also at ComputerWorld and The Register.

17 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Where is our 350GHz room temp CPU? by suso · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In 2006 they developed a 350GHz room temperature capable silicon gallium CPU. Where is that?

    1. Re:Where is our 350GHz room temp CPU? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      The world isn't ready for it.

      Christ, - you'd actually be able to run Crysis.

    2. Re:Where is our 350GHz room temp CPU? by kamapuaa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No they didn't. They developed a 350 GHz room temperature transistor.

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    3. Re:Where is our 350GHz room temp CPU? by suso · · Score: 3, Informative

      No they didn't. They developed a 350 GHz room temperature transistor.

      According to this article it was a CPU:

      http://www.techspot.com/news/2...

      Maybe the article is wrong?

    4. Re:Where is our 350GHz room temp CPU? by Art3x · · Score: 2

      In 2006 they developed a 350GHz room temperature capable silicon gallium CPU. Where is that?

      No they didn't. They developed a 350 GHz room temperature transistor.

      According to this article it was a CPU:

      http://www.techspot.com/news/2...

      Maybe the article is wrong?

      In 2002 they developed a 350 GHz silicon-germanium transistor.
      In 2006 they developed a silicon-germanium processor that reached 350 GHz at room temperature and 500 GHz when supercooled with liquid helium.

    5. Re:Where is our 350GHz room temp CPU? by ExekielS · · Score: 2

      Theoretically the maximum we tap out at is around 10 THz before raising the speed is just not practically doable. Even at 1 THz you need a clock for every core at a small scale. The big problem is power/heat that comes from capacitors. Since their power draw is theoretically infinite the first second and gradually falls, the shorter you run them as switches, the more time they spend at this peak theoretical power, the hotter they get. With non-capacitive transistors, there is no power increase with frequency, so 1Hz and 1 THz use the same power, generate the same heat. It is an experiment every junior in EE does themselves, if not sooner in their academic career. But not all transistors are capacitive. We can put TTL non-capacitive transistors onto silicon even at 14 nm technology level on regular silicon, which means that with the appropriate clocks, virtually all modern computers could be as much as 1000x faster than they presently run while using as much power as if we ran them at 250 MHz. There is no practical reason in any textbook I've found or any chip architecture designer or physicist I've talked to why we can't have processors running at least 500x faster than we currently run them at lower power usage. It is purely to drip feed the market small improvements to keep making tons of money overcharging people for marginally improved hardware, if you give them that much more than they need, there would be no demand for new improvements in architecture and structure, functionality, core design, not in consumer markets anyways, so they would have to get by on a much lower budget, and they wouldn't be able to get away with as many tiers of products. If somebody had a fat wad of cash, hired some good hackers to steal the chip designs from nVidia, AMD, Intel, and hired some timing architecture engineers to get the chips to still communicate at those speeds, they could flatten the computer hardware market for a very long time.

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    6. Re:Where is our 350GHz room temp CPU? by waferbuster · · Score: 2
      "There is no practical reason in any textbook I've found or any chip architecture designer or physicist I've talked to why we can't have processors running at least 500x faster than we currently run them at lower power usage." You need to read different textbooks, and talk with more knowledgeable chip architecture designers and physicists, preferably ones who actually work on CPU design. Not only is capacitance inherent in transistor design, it also impacts the interconnect layers and the substrate to which the chip is attached (you know... conductive structures with an dielectric insulating material separating them...)

      Of course, it's a giant conspiracy to keep reducing the gate width, and making fin-fet transisters, and changing to EUV (and trying to design high power lasers to feed these machines) because that's sooo much easier than changing to a non-capacitive transister. Google must be in on the conspiracy, since a search for "non-capacitive transistor" doesn't return any meaningful results.

      Sorry, your post is wrong in so many ways, that I don't know where to start... Maybe this will help: https://xkcd.com/386/

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  2. It's about yield by cerberusss · · Score: 3, Insightful

    IBM is not saying when the 7nm technology will become commercially available

    No, because a big hurdle is of course lithography on 7 nanos, but the even bigger hurdle is using it with a high enough yield to make it commercially viable.

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  3. Incorrect... by Junta · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Most current smartphones use processors containing 14nm technology

    Only a few use 14nm today. It's still relatively scarce.

    Also, a company that no longer had a fab did a proof of concept in a lab. This is not what the headline suggests. It's nice to know that we have a proven hypothetical to get down to 7, but the practical side of things has a tenuous relation to research.

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    1. Re:Incorrect... by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      Meh ... years ago when they spelled IBM by dragging around individual molecules hasn't really turned into much in the way of practical.

      Nonetheless, IBM does a lot of basic research into things, because some of it will eventually pay off.

      At least someone is doing it.

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  4. Not sure.. by Virtucon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah because IBM sold their FAB so they don't know when anybody will produce chips based on this 7nm technology. They'll be happy to license it to chip manufacturers, they just won't produce it themselves.

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
  5. Slimmer devices by hsa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Most likely not.

    The CPU/GPU is not the bottleneck anymore. The screen and wireless consume more power. The sad truth is, everything else has advanced, but battery technology is still in the last decade.

    1. Re:Slimmer devices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm sorry, but this is absolutely not true. You think the batteries in your devices are merely smaller because of reduced CPU consumption? The truth of the matter is that battery technology is improving at a constant rate, and the amount of R&D being poured into the industry is impressive. Just because you don't know that it's taking place doesn't mean it's not happening. And seriously, you can confirm this for yourself with some simple google searches.

    2. Re:Slimmer devices by meta-monkey · · Score: 2

      The results are absolutely there. Your phone today has bigger battery with smarter management technology than last year's model. But your phone is also faster, more powerful, and doing more stuff.

      You can get a phone that last for days. But not one running iOS8 or Android 5.

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    3. Re:Slimmer devices by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      The SoC in modern devices doesn't take anywhere near as much power as the screen or the cellular/wireless connection, so improvements to the fabrication process aren't going to add a significant amount of battery life. Here's a link to an analysis of the power consumption of the Openmoko phone (PDF warning) that shows that for most use cases, the SoC is only a minor part of the total power draw of the system.

      Thinness is mostly a by-product of being able to cram more circuits in a smaller space which cuts down on the size of the logic board more so than battery life improvements have allowed for smaller batteries.

  6. Pull the Other One by Jahoda · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Given the challenges Intel faced with yields at 14nm.... and indication they face the same challenges with 10nm, evidenced by the push back to 2017 for the technology - I'm pretty goddamned skeptical that IBM has "beat" anyone to anything. Could I go to an Intel laboratory today and see a proof-of-concept 7nm chip? 5nm? Probably using all manner of interesting silicon replacements? I bet that I could.

    No, as you can see from the market today, this is merely an attempt by IBM to resurrect their flagging stock prices (which has worked).

    1. Re:Pull the Other One by rubycodez · · Score: 2

      You are silly, IBM is showing a working device that proves 7nm is possible if using heavier atom in alloy, which is a first step

      Mass production lithography and multipatterning issues are another step that needs to be addressed.