IBM’s new 2nm chip

A little over a month ago, IBM announced that it had taken a very important step in chip design, developing a 2nm chip.

For those who do not know, chip manufacturing technology is measured in “nm” nano-meters (one billionth of a meter), which is the size of a transistor inside the chip. And the smaller the size of the transistors, the more they fit on the silicon wafer, giving the chip more computing power and at the same time consuming less power.

In the case of these new 2nm chips, their power consumption is reduced by a quarter and their computing power is increased by 45%. In other words, if it is placed on a mobile phone, it would last us operating 4 times longer than the current ones. Which is an important advance.

The chips being manufactured today are in the 10 and 7 nm scale, and there are already announcements from TSMC to start manufacturing 5 nm chips within 2 years.

The new chips announced by IBM could begin to manufacture within 4 years, and since IBM does not manufacture chips, it sells the license of its technology to other companies that are dedicated to manufacturing them.

For years it has been announced that the physical limit in the manufacture of silicon chips is being reached, but a way is still being found to reduce its size and improve its performance. We still have silicon chips for more than a decade.

Which is not to say that there are others looking for alternatives for the future, and those alternatives are in gallium arsenide (GaAs) and in carbon nanotubes that were also introduced by IBM more than 20 years ago.

These are alternative technologies that are not yet known when they will hit the market.

At the moment the chip market is very lively as these components are used in all kinds of products, and all large companies try to have their own designs to differentiate themselves and not depend on others, but in the end they all depend on the chip manufacturers that they are very few and are almost all in Asia (Korea, Taiwan and China).

The recent lack of chip supply has been a wake-up call for Western governments and large companies to be aware of the mistake they have made by trusting most of their manufacturing to distant countries. What is cheap today can be very expensive tomorrow.

And the most expensive thing is when you don’t have what you need.

IBM has its clear ideas and maintains the technology of chip design, even if it does not manufacture them. And it has the most advanced technology in the world and is a vital technology for everyone.

IBM’s people are not stupid at all.