New Fab Plans: the Plot Thickens

By Don Scansen, EETimes (May 10, 2021)

IBM (particularly the marketing team) deserves a healthy dose of congratulations for its announcement this week of a 2 nm test chip. The news was picked up far and wide, reported everwhere from The Verge to Fox News and in between.

IBM compared the improvements of its 2 nm technology to 7 nm technology power and performance characteristics claiming 45% higher performance and 75% reduction in power consumption.

IBM also made the now obligatory biological entity comparison by explaining the transistor was the size of two DNA strands.

I pulled the DNA reference from this CNN story. With apologies for piling on CNN, the press handling of the announcement was interesting since IBM will not be producing product wafers on this technology. According to CNN, “Most computer chips powering devices today use 10-nanometer or 7-nanometer process technology, with some manufacturers producing 5-nanometer chips.”

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