IBM develops manufacturing process for 5-nanometer chip

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IBM develops manufacturing process for 5-nanometer chip

Published: 05 Jun. 2017, 19:50

U.S. tech giant IBM said Monday that it has developed a groundbreaking transistor manufacturing process for 5-nanometer semiconductor chips.

In partnership with Samsung Electronics and GlobalFoundries, IBM said it has created the breakthrough process to build the world’s first chip that will pack 30 billion 5-nanometer switches.

The new chip, a follow-up to IBM’s 7-nanometer chip developed in July 2015, will carry 30 billion transistors on a chip the size of a fingernail, the company said. The previous chip packed 20 billion transistors.

Based on the increased transistor density, the new 5-nanometer chip will achieve a performance boost of 40 percent compared with the current10-nanometer chips, company officials said. The most advanced semiconductor chips at the moment use a FinFET process technology with circuitry that is 10 nanometers in width.

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