IBM has developed an industry-first process to build silicon nanosheet transistors that
will enable 5 nanometer (nm) chips.
In less than two years since developing a 7nm test node chip with 20 billion transistors,
scientists have paved the way for 30 billion switches on a fingernail-sized chip.
Compared to the leading edge 10nm technology available in the market, a nanosheet-based
5nm technology can deliver 40 percent performance enhancement at fixed power, or 75 percent
power savings at matched performance.
This improvement enables a significant boost to meeting the future demands of artificial
intelligence (AI) systems, virtual reality and mobile devices.
The resulting increase in performance will help accelerate cognitive computing, the Internet
of Things (IoT), and other data-intensive applications delivered in the cloud.
The batteries in smartphones and other mobile products could last two to three times longer than today’s devices