IBM research on chips has led to working versions of ultradense computer chips. It is four times more powerful than the most powerful chips. As such the semiconductor industry is under cloud. It doubles its transistor density every two years. Moore’s Law continued to operate for chip improvement. Whether this improvement would go beyond the current 14-nanometer generation of chips is being questioned by technologists. Each generation of chip is defined by the minimum size of fundamental components that switch current at nano-second intervals. Industry is travelling from 14-nanometers to 10-nanometers. Each generation reduces the area required for circuitry by 50 per cent. This shrinkage continue hopefully till 2018. IBM is working on 7-nanometer transistors by using silicon-germanium instead of pure silicon to enable faster transistor switching and lower power consumption. This indicates that such advances will call for newer materials.

To impress on you the tiny nature of the transistors, an RBC in blood is 7500 nanometers and a DNA strand 2.5 nanometers. IBM wants to make chips with 20 billion transistors.

IBM may license this hardware capacity to other manufacturers. It is for the semi-conductor industry to decide whether IBM’s gamble on silicon-germanium is the best way forward.