The Big Blue makes a big move! IBM announced the launch of the first 2nm chip manufacturing process with a 45% increase in performance

On May 6, IBM announced that it will launch the world's first 2nm chip manufacturing process, capable of mounting 50 billion transistors on a fingernail-sized chip. IBM said that when using the same power, the performance of the 2nm chip is about 45% higher than that of the current mainstream 7nm chip; at the same performance level, the power consumption is reduced by about 75%.

A few days ago, IBM announced that it had manufactured the first chip based on 2nm technology in the Albany Lab. The 2nm chip can accelerate the application of artificial intelligence, edge computing, autonomous systems and other fields. IBM said it will use the technology in its IBM Power Systems, IBM Z and other systems.

According to foreign media sources, IBM's new 2nm chip achieves a transistor density of 333 MTr/mm² (that is, 333 million transistors per square millimeter), which is equivalent to twice the transistor density of TSMC's 5nm chip.

The following figure shows the technical points of the IBM 2nm chip.

Source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16656/ibm-creates-first-2nm-chip

The IBM 2nm chip uses a three-stack GAA design with a unit height of 75 nm and a width of 40 nm. The height of each nanosheet is 5 nm and the interval is 5 nm. The gate poly pitch is 44 nm and the length is 12 nm.

IBM said that its design uses bottom dielectric isolation channel for the first time to reduce current leakage and reduce chip power consumption. In addition, the internal space of the chip uses the second-generation dry process design.

At present, IBM's breakthrough in 2nm chip manufacturing process is ahead of its competitors. Apple's M1 chip and A14 chip are based on TSMC's 5nm chip process technology; AMD and Qualcomm use TSMC's 7nm chip, Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 uses Samsung's 5nm chip process technology; Intel uses 10nm and 14nm chips. TSMC is also currently developing a 2nm chip process, and its 4nm and 3nm process production is expected to be put into mass production next year.

IBM's 2nm chip is still in the proof-of-concept stage. Mukesh Khare, vice president of IBM hybrid cloud, said that the 2nm chip process will be put into production by the end of 2024.

Reference link:

• https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2021/05/2-nm-chip/?social_post=4791223916&linkId=118030913
• https://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-research-creates-2nm-test-chip-eyes-performance-power-boost/#ftag=RSSbaffb68
• https://www.anandtech.com/show/16656/ibm-creates-first-2nm-chip
• https://www.engadget.com/ibm-2nm-chip-power-efficiency-100001102.html