IBM invests billions in successor silicon chips

IBM has announced that the company will invest $3 billion in new chip technology, including 7nm chip designs and possible successors to current silicon chips, over the next five years.

According to experts, the cost of chip manufacturing of silicon chips is increasing. Also, the limits of further downsizing of transistors would come into view with processes up to 10nm. Even smaller chip structures would cause problems with efficiency, heat generation and maximum achievable speeds. IBM nevertheless expects to develop silicon chips based on a 7nm process. Competitors such as TSMC and Samsung are also working hard on smaller processes. For example, TSMC wants to quickly switch to 10nm, according to Digitimes, after Samsung has made significant progress with its 14nm FinFET process and has concluded agreements with Qualcomm in this area. Chip giant Intel has expressed the expectation that it will be able to produce 7nm chips in 2017 or 2018.

To enable the necessary research into its chip designs, IBM wants to invest 2.2 billion euros over the next five years. In addition, the company is also looking for new chip technology as successors to the current silicon designs. IBM mentions graphene, carbon nanotubes, photonics and tunnel field effect transistors as interesting research areas in which it wants to invest time and effort. Quantum computing and neuromorphic processors, chips whose functioning is modeled on the functioning of the brain, are also areas of research in which the American computer giant is interested.

IBM, which has invested heavily in cloud computing and software for ‘big data’, states that in time new processor technology will be necessary to, for example, process transactions at high speed, enable fast encryption and to process the sensor inputs of internet of things applications. to read and understand.