IBM says it has built the first sub-1nm chip technology

The Download: Europe’s heat wave hits the grid, and IBM’s chip targets Moore’s Law

MIT Technology Review's daily briefing covers several major stories: IBM has unveiled a prototype chip with ~100 billion transistors on a fingernail-sized area, doubling transistor density from 2021 and potentially extending Moore's Law by building transistors upward rather than shrinking them. Europe is experiencing a record heat wave straining power grids, with some plants offline during historically planned maintenance windows. Anthropic has accused Alibaba of illicitly extracting Claude's capabilities via model distillation, calling it the largest known distillation attack. OpenAI and Broadcom revealed their first jointly designed AI chip called Jalapeño. Additional items cover the EU joining a US pact against Chinese AI, data center-driven inflation in memory chips, and companies struggling to control AI token spending costs.

IBM has unveiled chip technology that could help extend Moore’s Law another decade

IBM has announced a prototype chip using a new 'nanostack' architecture that vertically stacks two layers of transistors on a single silicon chip, achieving roughly 100 billion transistors on a fingernail-sized area — double the density of its 2021 state-of-the-art. The design, classified as a complementary field-effect transistor (CFET), promises up to 50% more performance and 70% better energy efficiency compared to IBM's previous generation. IBM distinguishes its approach by staggering the second transistor layer rather than stacking directly on top, simplifying wiring and improving alignment precision. Key manufacturing challenges remain, including thermal budget constraints (keeping processes below 400°C) and higher defect rates from multi-layer fabrication. IBM plans to partner with semiconductor manufacturers to bring the technology to GPUs, CPUs, and data center chips within a decade, potentially extending Moore's Law by 10–15 years.

IBM claims major chip breakthrough

IBM tuyên bố phát triển thành công công nghệ chip dưới 1nm đầu tiên thế giới, sử dụng thiết kế transistor 3D "nanostack" (0.7nm/7-angstrom), tăng mật độ transistor lên gấp đôi so với chip 2nm năm 2021, cải thiện 50% hiệu năng hoặc 70% hiệu quả năng lượng. Sản xuất thương mại có thể bắt đầu trong vòng 5 năm, nhưng chưa có đối tác sản xuất nào được công bố.

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