IBM and Samsung have collaborated on a new semiconductor design that could reduce chip energy by 85% when compared with existing finFET transistors, the companies announced Tuesday.
The new vertical device architecture used in new Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors (VTFET) could enable cell phone batteries that last a week on a charge instead of days. Data encryption and crypto mining could require less energy. IoT edge devices would also need less energy, to expand their use in ocean buoys, spacecraft and autonomous vehicles, IBM said.
Instead of attaching transistors on a semiconductor that lie flat, the new VTFET approach builds the transistors vertically on the chip surface, allowing a vertical current flow and allowing more transistors on a given surface. (The more transistors, the more calculations can be processed per second.) The VTFET approach creates more contact points for transistors for greater energy flow and lower waste. In addition to a reduction in energy usage, the new design means two times the performance of finFET chips.
Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates, called the announcement important for finding ways to improve chip performance while reducing energy leakage in a smaller package. He compared the change to building a highrise housing structure versus a single floor design,
Intel has also announced a change in structure for chips, Gold noted. “While IBM has been a leader in researching chip designs and Samsung is a good partner for them, IBM/Samsung is not alone in this space,” he said. “They need to compete with what Intel is doing and it’s not clear yet who will have the best transistor structure for the future generation of chips that measure in angstroms instead of nanometers. We’ll have to wait and see what the chips do once they come out, but this type of research is certainly critical to the continuation of Moore’s Law.”
The companies also announced that Samsung will manufacture IBM chips at 5 nm node to be used in IBM server platforms. In 2018, they announced Samsung would make 7 nm chips for IBM used in IBM’s Power 10 servers released earlier in 2021. The IBM Telum processor is also made by Samsung.
IBM recently announced a 2 nm chip breakthrough to fit 50 billion transistors in a space the size of a fingernail, but IBM noted that VTFET is new direction for chips that do not rely on the same approach to measuring size, such as 2 nm or 5 nm nodes. IBM has already created test chips on the VTFET process and has demonstrated them, according to a video IBM produced on the process:
IBM and Samsung conduct research together at the Albany Nanotech Complex in New York.
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