Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 129 posts

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#41

Post by pjc50 »

prewett wrote: post #16
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #3

Wow, 7 nanometer is incredible! I wonder how small they can get silicon / silicon-germanium based chips before we have to resort to other techniques such as light processors (since light can be closer and even cross each other without issue). 10 nanometers that they're introducing next year is also incredible, at least to me since I'm not a hardware engineer and can't imagine how difficult manufacturing these are.

I could be wrong, but I think optical processors would have serious diffraction problems with a 7 nm feature size, since the wavelength of blue light is somewhere around 300 nm. As far as fabrication, one problem is that obviously you aren't using visible light to etch features on your wafers. The x-rays must be fun to work with... Not to mention, your photoresist would have to resist x-rays. Getting x-ray-resisting…

It's not xrays, it's "extreme ultraviolet" (EUV), plus diffraction-based multiple patterning. http://www.extremetech.com/computing/160509-seeing-double-ts...

(tldr: 193nm light works down to 28nm lambda; progress requires moving further into UV and/or use immersing in liquid with different refractive index)

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#42

Post by Dylan16807 »

eleitl wrote: post #32
leni536 wrote: post #27

The lattice spacing of silicon is ~0.54nm so 7nm is around 13 lattice spacing, it's really impressive. Slowly but surely we will hit atomic limits.

The node size do not correspond to a given dimension of a structure anymore, it's computed property, from area of a given standard cell (e.g. SRAM cell).

That's informative but doesn't disagree. It's not a 1:1 correspondence but it's a pretty close correlation to the actual widths of things.

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#43

Post by awalton »

Let's all realize that all of these research branches have been playing around with 10nm and 7nm chips for years now - the fact IBM cobbled together some working chip isn't surprising. Getting it to production is really the vastly more important part.

This press release is equivalent to "Scientists Cures Diabetes in Mice" - a breakthrough that happens about a half dozen times a year but has still yet to make it from the lab to the FDA.

The timing of this press release is entirely to boost investor confidence in IBM and GlobalFoundries given Intel's recent announcement of delays at the 10nm process node.

edit:

The Ars article is vastly better than the above link: http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2015/07/ibm-unveils-industr...

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#44

Post by QuantumRoar »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #14
Frenchgeek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They use germanium.

It's silicon-germanium (so still has silicon in it). I'm curious what comes after :)

III-V semiconductors like Gallium Arsenide have a high mobility and are probably tested right now in Research labs around the world for CMOS-transistors (it is already in use for something like solar panels). But there's always the problem of how to scale these things as well as silicon based manufacturing.

Further out is still some stuff like graphene or carbon nanotubes. Of course, the structure of the transistor itself might change, which could enable further downscaling. There's already been a switch from planar to Silicon-on-Insulator (e.g. GlobalFoundries, TSMC, Samsung(?)) and Intel has the TriGate (everybody else calls it FinFet).

One day we might see the natural evolution to the gate-all-around FET, which would be something akin to a silicon nanowire (note: planar has the gate on top, FinFET has gate on top, left, and right of the channel). However, there are huge roadblocks in manufacturing to solve. And this could really be an issue. We might very well be able to build at the 5nm node. But if we can't build them fast and cheap enough, noone's going to do it. Manufacturers are already triple-patterning and doing all kinds of voodoo just to keep up with Moore's law.

Good old silicon might actually stay a central part for a much, much longer time.

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#45

Post by vegabook »

awalton wrote: post #43

Let's all realize that all of these research branches have been playing around with 10nm and 7nm chips for years now - the fact IBM cobbled together some working chip isn't surprising. Getting it to production is really the vastly more important part. This press release is equivalent to "Scientists Cures Diabetes in Mice" - a breakthrough that happens about a half dozen times a year but has still yet to make it from…

The Ars article you refer to appears to be fairly bullish on IBM's process technology and in particular the extreme ultraviolet lithography which has been problematic elsewhere. IBM has deep history of fundamental research turning into real product: just look at magneto-resistive drive heads as one example. I am much less sceptical than you that this company which has proven over many decades that it can drive fundamental technology forwards is only doing this for reasons of bamboozling the competition / investors.

Let's not forget that the chip in the Z series mainframes is the fastest commercial piece of silicon ever produced, and the high end Power8 chips handily outrun top-of-the-range 18-core Xeons on a number of benchmarks (though at worse power envelopes). (http://www.anandtech.com/show/9193/the-xeon-e78800-v3-review...).

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#46

Post by icanhackit »

Time to start working on the 7km chip. Fibre everywhere, content delivery servers everywhere, game servers out the wazoo so my crappy media streaming gadget or VR headset can remotely pull in the latest movies and games in 4K with minimal lag. You could outfit a few of the world's major cities for the cost of a new fab.

Unfortunately this won't sell new consumer hardware on an regular basis.

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#47

Post by POWERfan »

awalton wrote: post #43

Let's all realize that all of these research branches have been playing around with 10nm and 7nm chips for years now - the fact IBM cobbled together some working chip isn't surprising. Getting it to production is really the vastly more important part. This press release is equivalent to "Scientists Cures Diabetes in Mice" - a breakthrough that happens about a half dozen times a year but has still yet to make it from…

>This press release is equivalent to "Scientists Cures Diabetes in Mice" - a breakthrough that happens about a half dozen times a year but has still yet to make it from the lab to the FDA.

Chip manufacturers like Intel and IBM have regularly made good on promises of exponential progress for at least a half century. Comparing them to press release-pushing biomedical researchers is tantamount to a slur.

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#49

Post by dzhiurgis »

ianlevesque wrote: post #13
santaclaus wrote: post #9

Return of the PowerPC Mac?

Ha, not likely. But because IBM and GF will manufacture for 3rd parties there's at least hope for AMD now if they get a better design.

Also research devices like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueNorth

Re: IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips

#50

Post by POWERfan »

vex wrote: post #40
rurban wrote: post #28

YES! Kill Intel, PPC64 everywhere :) It will not happen, I know, but "Wouldn't it be nice" was always one of my favorite Beach Boys song (Pet Sounds!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofByti7A4uM This is THE chance.

Why exactly do you care so much?

I can't speak for the GP, but POWER is a true RISC ISA, and many prefer it just for that reason.
Post reply on HN