IBM unveils world's first 2 nanometer chip

In a major breakthrough for the computing industry, IBM has developed the world's first chip based on 2 nanometer (nm) architecture, which will improve battery efficiency and performance of future computing devices.

IBM said the new architecture will deliver 45% better performance at the same amount of power or will deliver the same performance but consume 75% less power in comparison to the 7nm chips that are currently used in many of the flagship laptops and smartphones available in the market.

IBM also claims that the new architecture will increase the battery life of smartphones by four times resulting in battery backup of up to 4 days. It will also improve the processing capabilities of PCs, speed up object detection in autonomous vehicles and reduce the growing carbon footprint of data centers.

The US based tech major said that the new architecture is based on IBM's nanosheet technology and can accommodate up to 50 billion transistors on a chip the size of a fingernail.

It was developed at IBM Research lab located at the Albany Nanotech Complex in Albany, New York in under four years since the announcement of the 5nm design.

"The innovation reflected in this new 2 nm chip is essential to the entire semiconductor and IT industry,” Darío Gil, SVP and director of IBM Research said in a statement.

"It is a demonstration of how breakthroughs can result from sustained investments and a collaborative R&D ecosystem approach," Gil added.

IBM is also credited for building the first functional 7 nm as well as 5nm chip design in 2015 and 2017, respectively.

Though the breakthrough will change computing performance and efficiency by miles, its commercial usage is unlikely to take place anytime soon, given the industry's slow pace of adoption.

For instance, barring Apple's new M1 chip which are based on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) 5nm architecture and Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 888 chipset which is based on Samsung's 5nm technology, the adoption of 5nm has been quite limited. Most of AMD's Ryzen processors are based on 7nm architecture while Intel powered devices are still based on 10nm and 14nm chip architectures.

IBM's 7nm based chip will be available commercially for the first time later this year. It will be used in their POWER10-based IBM power systems ( a family of IBM servers).