IBM creates the world’s first 5-nanometer chip

Partnering with Samsung and Global Foundries, IBM has manufactured an innovative computer chip measuring the size of a fingernail with 30 billion transistors packed up together and providing the processors a massive boost.

The company halved the size of the current chips’ transistor gates from 10 nanometers (nm) to 5 nm. This in turn means that more gates will lead to greater efficiency and power – innovation that will prove to be beneficial in almost everything from smartphones to autonomous cars.

Named the Fin Field Effect Transistor or FinFET, the modern design of the technology surmounts few limitations of the present design.

The CEO of VLSI Research, Dan Hutcheson expressed, “It's a big development. If I can make the transistor smaller, I get more transistors in the same area, which means I get more computing power in the same area.”

Science Alert reported that according to IBM, the chips, with the same power draw, are going to be 40% efficient, saving 75% power while processing at similar speed as current chips.

The chip design uses three current-carrying channels for each transistor. Along with that, a stacked silicon nanosheet design is used in order to create another channel effectively. More channels lead to more current while transistors are on and rapid leakage while they are off - the formula of power and efficiency gains.

Manufacturing of 7 nm chips using the same architecture as FinFET, are expected to initiate by 2018. However, the chips won’t be available for the consumer gadgets right away.

Hutcheson informed Wired, “The world's sitting on this stuff, artificial intelligence, self-driving cars. They're all highly dependent on more efficient computing power. That only comes from this type of technology. Without this, we stop.”

IBM will soon present its research at the 2017 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits in Japan.