![]() ![]() “There’s quite a bit of life left in Moore’s law, and this IBM architecture shows the path forward,” he says. Both Samsung and TSMC, the world’s leading chip makers alongside Intel, have signaled an intent to use nanosheet transistors, but have yet to do so in production.īut del Alamo believes the new approach shows that Moore’s law can keep ticking along. ![]() ![]() Carmakers who expected demand for new vehicles to fall during the pandemic have been especially hard hit, with many forced to shutter factories while they wait for chip supplies.ĭel Alamo at MIT says it will probably take chipmakers several years to master the tricks that IBM used to make the new transistors. The economic shockwaves caused by the pandemic, combined with supply chain disruptions, stockpiling prompted by US chip sanctions, and growing demand for cutting edge chips in products have led to shortages across many industries. Recent events have served to illustrate the growing importance of silicon chips across the world economy. Intel declined to comment on the IBM announcement. In March, Intel’s new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, announced a turnaround plan, including an agreement to collaborate with IBM on research. “IBM research group in Albany has really been one of the best centers for this type of research for the last 10 years.” “It is an important signal that the United States is not is not only not far behind, but in some instances it's actually ahead,” Hutcheson says. The sanctions have prevented technology companies such as Huawei from buying the latest chips, a move that has reportedly led the company to consider selling off its smartphone business. The US has used sanctions to target China over cybersecurity and trade issues. Intel, once the world’s most advanced chipmaker and still the most sophisticated in the US, has fallen behind TSMC in Taiwan and Samsung in South Korea in recent years, after struggling to master use of EUV in manufacturing. Meeting the engineering challenges of making new generations of chips can have seismic importance. Technologists have feared the end of Moore’s law for a decade or more, as chipmakers pushed the limits of manufacturing technology and novel electronics effects. It’s a real milestone for the industry,” he says, adding that the performance improvements touted by IBM seem conservative.Ĭhipmaking progress was most famously captured in Moore’s law, a rule of thumb named after Intel cofounder Gordon Moore which states that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years or so. But “they’ve done the most difficult part. Dan Hutcheson, CEO of VLSI Research, an analyst firm, says fabricating the 3D components undoubtedly requires new manufacturing tricks. ![]()
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