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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 workin

by awalton 11y ago

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-industrys-first-7nm-chip-moving-beyond-silicon/ http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2015/07/ibm-unveils-industr...

vegabook 11y ago
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/17 http://www.anandtech.com/show/9193/the-xeon-e78800-v3-review...).
- acomjean 11y ago
  I worked at IBM research for a bit (TJ Watson center Yorktown), when Gerstner was the CEO. They had PHDs chemists and physicists and mathematicians working on all sorts of things chip related. They had a mini fab in the building. I remember them testing building vibration levels. Turning technology into something that can me manufactured and sold was something was something definetely on the mind of research. IBM was spending 6 Billion a year on research and they were looking for more results out of it. They knew that an discovery/invention was good, but one that could be brought to market was better. The licensed a lot of their tech to the chip machine manufacturers if I remember correctly. Plus back in those days IBM had chip making facilities.
POWERfan 11y ago
>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.
- avz 11y ago
  Nitpick: > Comparing them [chip manufacturers] to press release-pushing biomedical researchers is tantamount to a slur. No, it isn't. Slower progress in biomedical research isn't a result of biomedical researchers exhibiting any of the qualities whose unwarranted attribution normally constitutes slur. It is the result of much greater complexity, lower predictability, higher safety requirements and weaker human understanding of biological systems compared to semiconductors.
  - vegabook 11y ago
    The point is that most semiconductor predictions come true, whereas biomed predictions are much less reliable. Unfortunately, that is a reflection on the latter's practitioners as they are aware of their poor odds yet still publish.
    - mikeyouse 11y ago
      I think this is unfair. Scientists often have a narrow-scope breakthrough in an extremely technical area and when they're asked to dumb it down for a wider audience, the tech press / university PR team runs wild. Something like curing diabetes is going to taken hundreds or thousands of small incremental improvements and breakthroughs so when they say "Could lead to a cure!!" they're usually correct but the nuance is often missed.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 11y ago
minthd 11y ago
Another issue: currently the biggest bottleneck , cost wise, is in lithography - the process we use to draw the transistors into chips. Because of this issue, the two latest generations of chips are more expensive(per transistor) than an older version - stopping moore's law. And moore's law probably won't return to life, until we learn how to solve that problem, which the current work doesn't help with.
- timboslice 11y ago
  This is where 450mm wafers and EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) were supposed to come in. EUV relieves the need for double patterning and the tremendous additional costs that entails (and was used to manufacture this 7nm chip). The CEO of Applied Materials, Gary Dickerson, has stated that the 450mm wafer timeline “has definitely been pushed out from a timing standpoint.” That’s incredibly important, because the economics of 450mm wafers were tied directly to the economics of another struggling technology — EUV. EUV is the follow-up to 193nm lithography that’s used for etching wafers, but it’s a technology that’s spent over a decade mired in technological problems and major ramp-up concerns. Toasting to the death of Moore's Law: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBrEx-FINEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBrEx-FINEI
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    And for comparison, scale fans, let's remember that we're talking about making 7nm features on wafers that are nearly a foot and a half wide, using near-as-dammit x-ray wavelengths. A few teething problems would be expected. 7nm has been struggling for a while, 5nm is likely to be late, and I don't think anyone really knows what happens after that. Longer term, industrial manufacture is probably going to have to move to something exotic like nano-assembly of individual atoms, with some extra finagling to work around tunnelling effects. (Easier said than done...)
    - api 11y ago
      ... and why would we invest the money to do that when there is not enough (software-driven) demand for that performance. The average person uses PCs and mobile devices to browse the web, write documents, order an Uber, and maybe play games. Nothing much is being done on the software front that challenges current systems. Maybe if VR took off or we got home applications for AI like domestic robotics that would change. I could see a domestic robot capable of folding clothes, cleaning up, etc. needing a low power chip that can do what a dual-12-core Xeon can do on smart phone power and thermal profiles. <5nm might be needed to accomplish that. I'm not sure server and high-end compute demand is sufficient to pay for the R&D that would be required to far beyond 7nm. But the good news is that we haven't even scratched the surface of what current systems could theoretically accomplish. Look into the demo scene and prepare to be blown away by what 8-bit CPUs in the 1980s could accomplish with non-crap code running on them. Maybe we need a software Moore's Law to take over for the hardware one -- right now software has more of an erooM's Law. One thing is clear: if you do software, ball's in your court either way. Either you need to invent killer apps to keep demand high for high performance computers -- things that really need that much power -- or you need to take over for the hardware people and start finding new efficiencies. Ball's really been in software's court for a while anyway with multi-core... linear performance max'd out (for consumer chips) a while ago.
joe_the_user 11y ago
> 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. Well, incremental lab improvements of this and that technique do make it into practice all the time. The failure of various biological researches is symptom of some fundamental brokenness or inherent hardness to biological research (biological systems are inherently messy - the ability of biologists to work with uniform, mass-produced mice is actually a hindrance when they try to apply those researches to non-uniform humans, etc). None of these apply to chip manufacture. The increase in quantum effects as one goes down in size may be a barrier to 7nm but it seems like it would a barrier to working one-off chips as well as to final production. Which is to say, the skepticism doesn't seem to have a basis. A working chip is an important and necessary step to getting to mass production - clearly mass production would be their aim. Your supposedly better link agrees: "While it should be stressed that commercial 7nm chips remain at least two years away, this test chip from IBM and its partners is extremely significant for three reasons: it's a working sub-10nm chip (this is pretty significant in itself); it's the first commercially viable sub-10nm FinFET logic chip that uses silicon-germanium as the channel material; and it appears to be the first commercially viable design produced with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography."

by awalton 11y ago

vegabook 11y ago

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/17 http://www.anandtech.com/show/9193/the-xeon-e78800-v3-review...).

acomjean 11y ago
I worked at IBM research for a bit (TJ Watson center Yorktown), when Gerstner was the CEO. They had PHDs chemists and physicists and mathematicians working on all sorts of things chip related. They had a mini fab in the building. I remember them testing building vibration levels. Turning technology into something that can me manufactured and sold was something was something definetely on the mind of research. IBM was spending 6 Billion a year on research and they were looking for more results out of it. They knew that an discovery/invention was good, but one that could be brought to market was better. The licensed a lot of their tech to the chip machine manufacturers if I remember correctly. Plus back in those days IBM had chip making facilities.

POWERfan 11y ago

>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.

avz 11y ago
Nitpick: > Comparing them [chip manufacturers] to press release-pushing biomedical researchers is tantamount to a slur. No, it isn't. Slower progress in biomedical research isn't a result of biomedical researchers exhibiting any of the qualities whose unwarranted attribution normally constitutes slur. It is the result of much greater complexity, lower predictability, higher safety requirements and weaker human understanding of biological systems compared to semiconductors.
- vegabook 11y ago
  The point is that most semiconductor predictions come true, whereas biomed predictions are much less reliable. Unfortunately, that is a reflection on the latter's practitioners as they are aware of their poor odds yet still publish.
  - mikeyouse 11y ago
    I think this is unfair. Scientists often have a narrow-scope breakthrough in an extremely technical area and when they're asked to dumb it down for a wider audience, the tech press / university PR team runs wild. Something like curing diabetes is going to taken hundreds or thousands of small incremental improvements and breakthroughs so when they say "Could lead to a cure!!" they're usually correct but the nuance is often missed.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 11y ago

minthd 11y ago

Another issue: currently the biggest bottleneck , cost wise, is in lithography - the process we use to draw the transistors into chips. Because of this issue, the two latest generations of chips are more expensive(per transistor) than an older version - stopping moore's law. And moore's law probably won't return to life, until we learn how to solve that problem, which the current work doesn't help with.

timboslice 11y ago
This is where 450mm wafers and EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) were supposed to come in. EUV relieves the need for double patterning and the tremendous additional costs that entails (and was used to manufacture this 7nm chip). The CEO of Applied Materials, Gary Dickerson, has stated that the 450mm wafer timeline “has definitely been pushed out from a timing standpoint.” That’s incredibly important, because the economics of 450mm wafers were tied directly to the economics of another struggling technology — EUV. EUV is the follow-up to 193nm lithography that’s used for etching wafers, but it’s a technology that’s spent over a decade mired in technological problems and major ramp-up concerns. Toasting to the death of Moore's Law: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBrEx-FINEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBrEx-FINEI
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  And for comparison, scale fans, let's remember that we're talking about making 7nm features on wafers that are nearly a foot and a half wide, using near-as-dammit x-ray wavelengths. A few teething problems would be expected. 7nm has been struggling for a while, 5nm is likely to be late, and I don't think anyone really knows what happens after that. Longer term, industrial manufacture is probably going to have to move to something exotic like nano-assembly of individual atoms, with some extra finagling to work around tunnelling effects. (Easier said than done...)
  - api 11y ago
    ... and why would we invest the money to do that when there is not enough (software-driven) demand for that performance. The average person uses PCs and mobile devices to browse the web, write documents, order an Uber, and maybe play games. Nothing much is being done on the software front that challenges current systems. Maybe if VR took off or we got home applications for AI like domestic robotics that would change. I could see a domestic robot capable of folding clothes, cleaning up, etc. needing a low power chip that can do what a dual-12-core Xeon can do on smart phone power and thermal profiles. <5nm might be needed to accomplish that. I'm not sure server and high-end compute demand is sufficient to pay for the R&D that would be required to far beyond 7nm. But the good news is that we haven't even scratched the surface of what current systems could theoretically accomplish. Look into the demo scene and prepare to be blown away by what 8-bit CPUs in the 1980s could accomplish with non-crap code running on them. Maybe we need a software Moore's Law to take over for the hardware one -- right now software has more of an erooM's Law. One thing is clear: if you do software, ball's in your court either way. Either you need to invent killer apps to keep demand high for high performance computers -- things that really need that much power -- or you need to take over for the hardware people and start finding new efficiencies. Ball's really been in software's court for a while anyway with multi-core... linear performance max'd out (for consumer chips) a while ago.

joe_the_user 11y ago

> 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. Well, incremental lab improvements of this and that technique do make it into practice all the time. The failure of various biological researches is symptom of some fundamental brokenness or inherent hardness to biological research (biological systems are inherently messy - the ability of biologists to work with uniform, mass-produced mice is actually a hindrance when they try to apply those researches to non-uniform humans, etc). None of these apply to chip manufacture. The increase in quantum effects as one goes down in size may be a barrier to 7nm but it seems like it would a barrier to working one-off chips as well as to final production. Which is to say, the skepticism doesn't seem to have a basis. A working chip is an important and necessary step to getting to mass production - clearly mass production would be their aim. Your supposedly better link agrees: "While it should be stressed that commercial 7nm chips remain at least two years away, this test chip from IBM and its partners is extremely significant for three reasons: it's a working sub-10nm chip (this is pretty significant in itself); it's the first commercially viable sub-10nm FinFET logic chip that uses silicon-germanium as the channel material; and it appears to be the first commercially viable design produced with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography."