IBM produces 2nm silicon wafers

[Frenzy]

So I thought this was pretty interesting:

https://www.engadget.com/ibm-2nm-chip-power-efficiency-100001102.html

Do you think major breakthroughs like this will mess with cpu timelines?

 

[SKILL]

It's not really a major breakthrough though? They've made 2nm wafers, which are probably cache/sram because it's easy to do, functional processors on 2nm are still years away, just like TSMC's N3... It's just a press release to get some attention

 

[Frenzy]

Ah, damn I was getting excited for nothing then

 

[SKILL]

Interesting article here btw: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16656/ibm-creates-first-2nm-chip

They got the transistor density which is kinda more useful than the advertised nanometre value, does look to be good at that, slightly ahead of the (estimated) TSMC N3 process.

 

[Journey]

TSMC's N3 is only around 12 months away from mass production right now, and N5 is in it's second year of volume production already, so I'd say maybe TSMC may be sandbagging a bit with N3 being ready in the very early H2 '2022 rather than the predicted Q4' 22. Meanwhile this IBM 2nm node is not going to be fully volume ready until 2024/25, which isn't that long, but it is still 3 years, my question is who are the clients, or will it be in house only?

 

[Gerard]

2nm by their measurement which really means nothing as they all have different ways of saying it's "x size" then another company says something like "their 2nm is really comparable to our 5nm" or something along those lines. Dunno why there's not a standard measurement system they have to adhere to.

 

[james.miller]

Ian Cutress talks about it here:

 

[Frenzy]

nice ill give that a watch