IBM has manufactured the first functional 7nm test chips

Breakthrough made possible after partnerships with GlobalFoundries and Samsung

Thu Jul 09 2015, 12:21

IBM'S RESEARCH TEAM has manufactured functional test chips using a 7nm production process, making it the first in the industry to produce chips with working transistors of this size.

IBM said that the breakthrough was made possible by partnering with GlobalFoundries and Samsung at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in New York.

Making 7nm process nodes has been out of reach until now owing to what IBM called "a number of fundamental technology barriers" that resulted in compromised performance.

The firm is hoping that the test chips will be the beginning of smaller semiconductors that can carry on Moore's Law and eventually power analytic workloads.

The 7nm test chip has working transistors and was created using processes including Silicon Germanium channel transistors and Extreme Ultraviolet lithography, said IBM's research team.

The firm claimed that it has been able to achieve almost 50 percent area scaling improvements over today's most advanced 10nm technology, which has itself yet to result in production chips coming to market.

Meanwhile, Intel has yet to produce such small chip sizes. The firm said earlier this year that it is still researching options for 7nm technologies.

The announcement arrives less than a week after IBM completed a deal with GlobalFoundries to sell its chip-making arm for $1.5bn.

The move was made official in IBM's quarterly earnings figures released in October last year, and will see IBM ridding itself of a business unit that has become more trouble than it's worth.

IBM said that the transaction means that GlobalFoundries becomes IBM's exclusive semiconductor processor technology provider for the next 10 years, ensuring a long-term supply for IBM systems.

The move comes during a busy time for IBM. The firm announced earlier this year that it is investing $3bn over the next four years in the development of a new Internet of Things unit.

The idea behind IBM's initiative is to build a cloud-based open platform to help the company's clients and ecosystem partners better integrate real-time data