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IBM debuts sub-1 nanometer chip technology
- giwook 4mo agoHow does IBM commercialize this? Do they license this out to fabs?
- WaxProlix 4mo agoSit on a patent and try to scrape earnings from others, maybe? That is, license or litigate.
- evanjrowley 4mo agoboost sales for their systems division, POWER CPUs, mainframes, maybe Quantum stuff
- TallGuyShort 4mo agoI always feel like I'm not quite getting quantum stuff no matter how much I read and learn: what does this advancement have to do with quantum computers?
- amirhirsch 4mo agoDon't worry about not grokking quantum computing stuff, neither do any of the people who invest in it as well as many people who work on it. 1. The OP has nothing to do with quantum computers. 2. Quantum computing deals in coherent quantum states: associated with N qubits there are 2^N complex amplitudes. You can measure by sampling the square-magnitude of the complex amplitude which turns it into a Probability Distribution. Quantum computing "gates" cause interference in the complex amplitude of entangled qubits cancelling out incorrect results, such that if you maintain coherence for long enough and sample the final state and measure the probability distribution, you get a computationally useful result. The key challenge in quantum computing is extending the coherence time of a larger and larger number of qubits, which is why you hear so much about quantum error correction. Recent results from Google showed a scaling law for "surface codes" using multiple qubits to create an error-corrected topological qubit with extended lifetime. There is no telling how far this scaling law will go, but as long as Gil Kalai is in the next room, it is unlikely there will be actual useful quantum computation for a while.
- amirhirsch 4mo ago[dead]
- TallGuyShort 4mo agoOkay but why did this chip have anything to do with that?
- wmf 4mo agoThey licensed 2 nm to Rapidus so yes.
- drob518 4mo agoI’m sure they will license it. It’s better for them if everyone in the industry can innovate on everything around it. All the process tech companies will make it more cost effective, for instance, which helps IBM as well.
- Danox 4mo agoA sad ending for one of great American companies...
- topspin 4mo ago> 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.
- jcgrillo 4mo ago> a writhing mass of copulating tapeworms What a metaphor! I will file that one away for some glorious future opportunity.
- topspin 4mo agoCredit to Alan Cox. I filed it away after he wrote it in a LKML message many years ago.
- dboreham 4mo agoAh, thanks for that explanation. I was wondering how IBM could fund cutting edge research in semiconductors when they haven't been a semiconductor manufacturer for many years.
- ginko 4mo agoIBM 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?
- vessenes 4mo agoMy understanding is they are largely an IP business. That said this release mentioned an ASML machine on prem, so?
- AnimalMuppet 4mo agoI believe that IBM makes the chips for their Z Series mainframes. I mean, that's low volume production, but they need small feature size.
- nradov 4mo agoIBM 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 https://www.ibm.com/products/z/telum
- ac29 4mo ago> 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
- topspin 4mo agoIt's a lab. It's where ASML brings up the prototype machine and gets it working, with IBM talent working out the problems and getting it ready for commercial operation. They won't make chips at scale there: the facility isn't designed for that part. The thing to understand here is that isn't a simple, clean, comprehensible business arrangement. The Albany facility is highly subsidized by the state. IBM has their hooks deep in the operation and occupation of the site. Such facilities are extraordinary with capabilities that talent that are unique and fabulously expensive. That's why ASML is there, and not just doing it in some village in the Netherlands. It's why when Obama, Biden, Trump or whomever tells ASML to whom they will and won't be selling hardware, ASML listens.
- mxuribe 4mo agoA 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!
- saulpw 4mo agoThere are 3 orders of magnitude between nano (^-9) and pico (^-12). An Angstrom is ^-10m.
- mxuribe 4mo agoAaahhh, ok, thanks!
- applfanboysbgon 4mo agoYou 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 the tiny ones.
- SoftTalker 4mo agoWhy 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).
- floxy 4mo ago>We have centimeter (10 mm) then decimeter (100mm) Does anyone actually use those? I think I would throw up a little in my mouth if I saw either of those on a mechanical drawing.
- buran77 4mo ago> 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 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. What they actually deliver is a "nanostack architecture" built with ~5nm features that according to them is comparable to a hypothetical real sub-1nm chip. It's an impressive achievement nonetheless but it looks like the industry has a few too many marketers.
- cyanydeez 4mo agoOn the otherhand, no investor really cares what it's called, they just need to know it's next gen.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- pseudosavant 4mo agoMy 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?
- makeitdouble 4mo agoIf 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"
- y1n0 4mo ago“TeraThread”
- petcat 4mo ago> IBM and its partners conduct this work at a leading semiconductor research facility in Albany, New York, which will soon be home to a High Numerical Aperture Extreme Ultraviolet (High NA EUV) lithography tool, essential for the future of logic scaling. Developed by ASML, this technology enables ultra‑precise circuit printing, supporting the creation of smaller, more powerful chips. I'm guessing that this is the technology that is developed by Cymer (ASML subsidiary) in California, correct? Is there competing technology? I know xLight is trying to make some inroads on their own version of this EUV tech. I have not heard about any progress though.
- porridgeraisin 4mo agoCorrect
- scrlk 4mo agoCymer builds the EUV light source, but the biggest enabler for High NA EUV is using anamorphic optics (ie asymmetric horizontal and vertical magnification) from Zeiss: https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2024/5-things-high-na-euv https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2024/5-things-high-na-e...
- applfanboysbgon 4mo agoFor 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.
- micw 4mo agoSo the title should be corrected. The did not debut sub nm chips at all.
- antisthenes 4mo agoThat ship sailed long ago. I think it was around 32nm-22nm node when the marketing term started diverging from the physical feature size.
- micw 4mo agoMore reason to frame it correctly, like "IBM debuts another 5 nanometer chip technology, selling it as sub nanometer chip technology"
- wmf 4mo agoThe marketing nm better represent the density and performance of the transistors than the actual feature size, especially in this case.
- lp4v4n 4mo ago>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.
- applfanboysbgon 4mo agoThey 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.
- throw0101d 4mo agoOne of the images has "15 rows of Si atoms". Is there a limit to how small things can go? A single atom? Is there a physical/molecular limit to Moore's Law?
- colechristensen 4mo agoI mean, you can't get smaller than an atom, there is some amount of plausibility of using individual atoms as at least the occasional computing element. Beyond that, engineering a quark-gluon plasma as a processor? I'd watch that Star Trek episode. (we might fantasize about stuff like that but we're roughly monkeys smashing rocks together in a cave vs. building an iPhone sort of gap away from that kind of thing unless somebody has a really good idea)
- vitally3643 4mo agoYou could, in principle, use photons and/or electrons. We got pretty damn close in the vacuum tube era, and photonic computing has been a popular research topic for a while. You also have quantum computing, which I think can/does use subatomic particles? Not sure about that one
- superjan 4mo agoYou can’t make smaller chips features with photonics. Visible light photons have a wavelength between 400 and 800 nm, much larger than current chip features. When you go to higher frequencies they get smaller, but they are really difficult to produce and control.
- HarHarVeryFunny 4mo agoIt depends on the type of quantum computer. In some a physical qubit is a single atom, but then to make it reliable they need to add error correction resulting in logical qubits consisting of at least 100 or so physical qubits. Another type of quantum computer uses qubits consisting of "quantum circuits" which are actually huge macroscopic constructions (> 1mm).
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- elisbce 4mo agoWhy doesn't the industry use something like transistor density per cubic cm? This would extend to 3d cases and impossible to fake
- zamadatix 4mo agoThe industry does use a collection of more practical measurements, like transistor density. Marketing pieces for the news tend to use this kind of jargon precisely because it can be fudged & it sounds like it means something else than it really does to the average person. It's also simple enough to avoid needing to really explain what kinds of numbers are impressive etc, everyone just knows less than 1 nm is tiny and they've heard X nm for decades to compare to at this point.
- stackedinserter 4mo agoSince a transistor can't be smaller than a single atom, maybe it's time to start optimizing our software again.
- monirmamoun 4mo agoTwo big problems 1) NOBODY knows what IBM's definition of "sub 1nm" means 2) IBM bullshits so much more than anyone including Intel (remember the "teleportation" ads years ago) that nobody is going to waste time researching what they mean in reality
- wmf 4mo agoI know what it means. Something isn't automatically bullshit because it's outside your field of expertise.
- cr3ative 4mo ago“I’m able to parse a marketing term” isn’t a great claim here. Pointing out it’s an unclear term largely abused is valid.
- wmf 4mo agoThat's not what I meant. IBM published some scientific papers which explain the details. If you don't have the background to understand the papers and you don't trust the marketing that still doesn't justify rhetorically flipping the table.
- pjmlp 4mo agoPeople love to hate on IBM, ask why it is relevant today, while several of their beloved FOSS projects are in some way, form or fashion, made possible with IBM's money.
- markhahn 4mo agohas anyone found a paper with details? also, I was expecting to see cfets mentioned.
- alexey-salmin 4mo agoThe most surprising part for me is that IBM still somehow owns silicon labs, I was sure it's effectively a consulting company by now
- Barrin92 4mo agoIBM has been the company with the most patent registrations in the US for I think 29 of the last 30 years. They're one of the largest industrial research organizations in the world. They're doing more hard science research than almost anyone else.
- smokefoot 4mo agoWhich is so weird, right? Like what is IBM now and how does a research lab make sense with the rest of their business? The money-making parts of IBM are: legacy software and hardware (declining), consulting (low margin, low leverage), enterprise software (mostly redhat, not really growing). It's hard to explain how IBM research is accretive to any of that.
- macintux 4mo agoI don't know enough about their business to say, but I'm thrilled at even the idea that someone might actually value long-term success over quarterly earnings.
- Danox 4mo agoIBM at one time had nearly everything in modern tech under their roof like Xerox and squandered it. There is no comeback for them. They were the second American chip company that said no to Steve Jobs when hinted about designing smaller better chip mobile devices the other two were Motorola and Intel Apple had to eventually do it themselves. Apple Silicon
- rbanffy 4mo agoLicensing is a substantial source of revenue, and their servers have very impressive (think Telum’s caching) innovations, even though they rely on third-parties for manufacturing the chips themselves. They are also betting on quantum computing to become commercially relevant.
- victor106 4mo agoKeep hearing that IBM makes these incredible chips but don’t see anyone using IBM chips. What do they do with them?
- jjk7 4mo agousgov
- xxpor 4mo agoApproximately everyone (at least in the F500) outside of Big Tech uses them. For example, Costco's entire inventory management system runs on IBM i (so, POWER). You can see the classic terminal look around the store. Banks run a TON of z and i. You'll never see them because they're essentially always in data centers, but I guarantee you interact with them even if it's very non-obvious because there's 50 microservices between the UI and the actual system of record.
- HerbManic 4mo agoAnd some of those i and z systems have some obscene engineering in them. I cannot find it now but i remember seeing a cross section of their 40 layer PCB simply so they could get more memory/IO performance to the CPU. POWER may have dropped out of the consumer space but it still has a vital place in servers.
- kcb 4mo agoThe product here is the research and licensing the tech.
- ternaryoperator 4mo agoTheir line of POWER chips are used in their mainframes
- lizknope 4mo agoNo, their mainframes use the zArch which goes back to the System/360 from 1964. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/Architecture IBM sells huge servers with POWER architecture CPUs but they are not what people are referring to when they talk about IBM mainframes.
- perching_aix 4mo agoI wonder at what point does it become deceptive in the legally biting way to market process nodes like this. One can wax and wane a bunch about industry terminology status quo, but this is mental.
- kitd 4mo agoIt'll be a brave man who takes on the IBM legal department over terminology in widespread use.
- jadar 4mo agoJust to be clear, this doesn't mean that anything on the die actually measures 0.7nm — it means that it's roughly double the density as the previous node generation. At some point the industry decided to keep talking about "nanometers" even though the actual transistor sizes have been decoupled from the node name for years.
- zmgsabst 4mo agoGenerations. Gen Alpha were born since the naming became detached from actual physical size. And parts of Gen Z (before) and Gen Beta (after).
- port11 4mo agoNaming generations is a futile, arbitrary process, whereas the measurement unit for engineering processes should be precise and well defined?
- zmgsabst 4mo agoI was saying not just “years”, but generations (approx two, straddling a full one) have passed since the naming reflected anything real. In hindsight, I phrased that poorly.
- wongarsu 4mo agoNode sizes have been "generations" for a long time. The number is just the previous number divided by sqrt(2), rounded in an arbitrary direction. Sqrt(2) because reducing each dimension by that number leads to double the density, and it's non-obvious enough to sound like a real measurement
- georgeburdell 4mo agoIBM debuts a PDK and some test structures, as they have no production fabs
- rbanffy 4mo agoThey have small scale fabrication capabilities or they wouldn’t be able to validate the technology enough to sell it.
- georgeburdell 4mo agoTell me where I said they didn’t have fabs
- lizknope 4mo agoRemember that IBM paid Global Foundries $1.5 billion to take their fabs and design services group. GF did not pay IBM. IBM paid GF to take the fabs away. https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/ibm-to-pay-globalfoundries-15-billion-to-take-chip-unit-idUSKCN0I9082/ https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/ibm-to-pay-global...
- d3m0t3p 4mo agoIt was 15 years ago. Whole management got replaced, they are quite ambitious. Let's see if how this works out now.
- trynumber9 4mo agoThe plan doesn't involve running fabs again. Too expensive. IBM licenses their manufacturing technology (so far to Rapidus in Japan).
- cubefox 4mo agoRelevant quote: > IBM sees a path to production in as early as the next 5 years. 5 years is a long time for a product roadmap, so there are probably some significant unsolved problems remaining, and the timeline depends on whether IBM can solve these problems.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- IanCutress 4mo agoFor what it's worth, here's my 7000+ word deep dive into the technology. https://morethanmoore.substack.com/p/ibms-announces-07nm-process-node https://morethanmoore.substack.com/p/ibms-announces-07nm-pro...
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- greenavocado 4mo agoNot bad, now you just have to fold it 86 times to reach one Planck length. The only issue you'd run into is it would have to be 77 quadrillion kilometers thick
- bozhark 4mo agoSub-Atomic level chips soon, then?
- Alien1Being 4mo agoMore marketing lies from IBM. Sad to see the decline and corruption of a once OK company. Selling a 5 nm vertically stacked chip as equivalent to 0.7 nm Shades of Watson and other IBM lies.
- sidcool 4mo agoHow come we don't hear anything about Watson?
- EagnaIonat 4mo agoWell Watson went from a product, to product line branding. Then changed to Watsonx. Doing a search on that there are loads of news articles.
- spzeno 4mo agoIs the 3D transistor proposed by IBM on the same track as Tao's Law proposed by Huawei?
- kosolam 4mo agoThey dont give the exact size hmm
- masswerk 4mo agoHow do these 3D architectures scale regarding yield? (The naïve expectation would be that adding vertical layers should have exponential impact on yield.) Is this commercially viable, near term?
- Loic 4mo agoLooking at this picture: https://filecache.mediaroom.com/mr5mr_ibmnewsroom/201436/IBM-Research_TEM_4.jpg https://filecache.mediaroom.com/mr5mr_ibmnewsroom/201436/IBM... I am just astonished at the quality of the structure. Not only that, but the quality of the "cut" to then be able to take this picture. I was closely involved in EM imaging more than 30 years ago, this is just wonderful to see such pictures now.
- yencabulator 4mo agoI understand the general area of "small imaging and manipulation" is something IBM has been working on for a very long time. This is STM from 1989: https://sciencephotogallery.com/featured/ibm-atom-manipulation-demonstration-ibm-researchscience-photo-library.html https://sciencephotogallery.com/featured/ibm-atom-manipulati...
- Loic 4mo agoMy mother worked in this field and collaborated with IBM at that time. So yes, this is why I find these pictures even more impressive...
- ryan_glass 4mo agoI'm sure this is a wonderful breaktheough but I'd rather have the current, or a recent, generation of semiconductor technology available at a reasonable price.
- linzhangrun 4mo agoPhysically impossible. I thought process-node marketing terms had already gradually started to drop "nm", like "Intel 7" and so on, which was the old "10nm". But seeing progress in semiconductor nodes is always a good thing. It has felt quite stagnant these past few years. What surprised me is that it came from IBM.
- ferry-wire 4mo ago[dead]