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IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology

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Re: IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology

#31

Post by ac29 »

nradov wrote: post #18
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

> 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

Re: IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology

#32

Post by makeitdouble »

pseudosavant wrote: post #20
buran77 wrote: post #10

> logic technology can extend for the first time below the 1 nm node, advancing the era of angstrom-level scaling, where dimensions approach the size of individual atoms. While transistor nodes now refer to a generation of manufacturing technology versus an exact physical dimension, IBM’s 0.7 nm technology—also referred to as 7 angstroms—demonstrates how continued scaling remains possible. Continuing the well establi…

My read on it was that they are trying to imply a transistor density (in a 2D plane sense) that is comparable to a 1nm process? But they achieve that through stacking (3D, not 2D) since the features aren't actually anywhere near 1nm?

If they're adding a dimension, the marketing should reflect that.

I know they won't go for an anything that makes as much sense as 5nm3, so I vote for "1nm hyper space"

Re: IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology

#33

Post by SoftTalker »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #21
mxuribe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aaahhh, ok, thanks!

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 th…

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).

Re: IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology

#34

Post by Romario77 »

mxuribe wrote: post #7

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!

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.

Re: IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology

#35

Post by TallGuyShort »

roflmaostc wrote: post #26
buran77 wrote: post #10

> logic technology can extend for the first time below the 1 nm node, advancing the era of angstrom-level scaling, where dimensions approach the size of individual atoms. While transistor nodes now refer to a generation of manufacturing technology versus an exact physical dimension, IBM’s 0.7 nm technology—also referred to as 7 angstroms—demonstrates how continued scaling remains possible. Continuing the well establi…

yeah, where on the pictures is the 0.7nm feature? The linespacing is around 5nm. Is it the white line which is 0.7nm?

I really can't see where the 0.7nm is coming from. The white line looks like it's just an edge of a feature that is "15 rows of silicon atoms", which by some quick arithmetic on Wolfram Alpha has to be AT LEAST ~1.6nm, and the way the rows of atoms appear to be packed in that image and by the provided scale, it seems to be significantly more. Using the white line as a meaningful measurement seems to me to be more misleading than any other interpretation here.

Re: IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology

#36

Post by bruckie »

ijidak wrote: post #9
ginko wrote: post #3

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?

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.

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

Re: IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology

#37

Post by applfanboysbgon »

lp4v4n wrote: post #29
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #13

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.

>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.

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.

Re: IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology

#38

Post by topspin »

giwook wrote: post #2

How does IBM commercialize this? Do they license this out to fabs?

> Do they license this out to fabs?

Broadly speaking yes, this is the business model. IBM has been at this for many years with technology transfers, licensing agreements, support and other arrangements. Rapidus, Samsung, GlobalFoundries, ST, SMIC, AMD, etc. have all used IBM R&D work at various times for various nodes and products.

The cutting edge of semiconductors is a writhing mass of copulating tapeworms, and IBM lives deep inside that ball. For IBM, what this means is that when you buy one of the ASML machines to make products with this process, you'll pay IBM for the knowledge and support to actually get it working, or give them a cut, or something else, TBD, as circumstances warrant.

Re: IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology

#39

Post by formerly_proven »

buran77 wrote: post #10

> logic technology can extend for the first time below the 1 nm node, advancing the era of angstrom-level scaling, where dimensions approach the size of individual atoms. While transistor nodes now refer to a generation of manufacturing technology versus an exact physical dimension, IBM’s 0.7 nm technology—also referred to as 7 angstroms—demonstrates how continued scaling remains possible. Continuing the well establi…

> Continuing the well established trend of making bold claims about physical dimensions that have nothing to do with any of the structures in the chip, and the name scales better than the tech.

We care about PPA (power, performance, area) and not how large or not-large features actually are. Comparing gate lengths between a 1980s planar transistor and a 2010s 3D FinFET or GAA transistor is obviously nonsense, the relatively aligned node names of the industry actually do make sense as a shortcut here.

Re: IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology

#40

Post by nielsbot »

1313ed01 wrote: post #30
saulpw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

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`

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