
IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips - mattee
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/technology/ibm-announces-computer-chips-more-powerful-than-any-in-existence.html
======
awalton
Let's all realize that all of these research branches have been playing around
with 10nm and 7nm chips for years now - the fact IBM cobbled together some
working chip isn't surprising. Getting it to production is really the vastly
more important part.

This press release is equivalent to "Scientists Cures Diabetes in Mice" \- a
breakthrough that happens about a half dozen times a year but has still yet to
make it from the lab to the FDA.

The timing of this press release is entirely to boost investor confidence in
IBM and GlobalFoundries given Intel's recent announcement of delays at the
10nm process node.

edit:

The Ars article is vastly better than the above link:
[http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2015/07/ibm-unveils-
industr...](http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2015/07/ibm-unveils-industrys-
first-7nm-chip-moving-beyond-silicon/)

~~~
POWERfan
>This press release is equivalent to "Scientists Cures Diabetes in Mice" \- a
breakthrough that happens about a half dozen times a year but has still yet to
make it from the lab to the FDA.

Chip manufacturers like Intel and IBM have regularly made good on promises of
exponential progress for at least a half century. Comparing them to press
release-pushing biomedical researchers is tantamount to a slur.

~~~
avz
Nitpick:

> Comparing them [chip manufacturers] to press release-pushing biomedical
> researchers is tantamount to a slur.

No, it isn't. Slower progress in biomedical research isn't a result of
biomedical researchers exhibiting any of the qualities whose unwarranted
attribution normally constitutes slur. It is the result of much greater
complexity, lower predictability, higher safety requirements and weaker human
understanding of biological systems compared to semiconductors.

~~~
vegabook
The point is that most semiconductor predictions come true, whereas biomed
predictions are much less reliable. Unfortunately, that _is_ a reflection on
the latter's practitioners as they are aware of their poor odds yet still
publish.

~~~
mikeyouse
I think this is unfair. Scientists often have a narrow-scope breakthrough in
an extremely technical area and when they're asked to dumb it down for a wider
audience, the tech press / university PR team runs wild. Something like curing
diabetes is going to taken hundreds or thousands of small incremental
improvements and breakthroughs so when they say "Could lead to a cure!!"
they're usually correct but the nuance is often missed.

~~~
vegabook
There is no excuse for publishing anything that does not stand up to
replicability and a significantly high enough threshold chance that published
prediction will be realised. Hence the OP is correct in pointing out the
unfairness of equating comparatively reliable semiconductor process
improvement predictions with the relative dartboard that is biotech.

If third parties ("PR") hijack the truth, it is up to the researcher publicly
to denounce them.

If, as I suspect, such denunciation is bad for a researcher's funding, then we
have a problem in research, if indeed, in such circumstances, it can even be
called research (as opposed to, say, "marketing").

Clearly biotech is a younger field than semiconductors, and it should be given
a wide berth to make mistakes without prejudice, but that does not exonerate
it from explicitly communicating the expected uncertainty of its results.

------
RoboTeddy
Great talk that describes how modern (as of 2011) computer chips are
manufactured:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4)

~~~
rndn
This EEVBlog episode on silicon chips is also great:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0WEx0Gwk1E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0WEx0Gwk1E)

------
jtchang
No mention of Intel anywhere in the article and how far along they are. Also
7nm blows my mind. I mean current CPUs already blow my mind with how tiny the
transistors are getting.

And specially stabilized buildings? "NOBODY MOVE! WE'RE ETCHING!"

~~~
moconnor
I had a tour of AMD's Dresden fab several years ago, it was literally a
building inside a building, with the inner building mounted on shock absorbers
to isolate it from vibrations. IIRC the manufacturing chain was entirely
automated - silicon in, chips out.

That was several generations ago, I'm looking forward to seeing what is
required to manufacture with high yield at 7nm!

~~~
ximeng
Is it possible for general members of the public to arrange tours of
microprocessor fabs anywhere?

~~~
StavrosK
With all the clean rooms required, I doubt it, but I don't know.

~~~
monk_e_boy
We have an ultra-clean room. It has a window.

~~~
tinco
My university has clean rooms, they have windows, the hallways have windows
too so you can peek in from outside. Always great to show to visitors :) (at
night they have weirdly colored lighting, pink, purple, so it looks really
funky, no idea why)

~~~
NathanthePie
It's possible that when nobody is working in the room, the lights aid in
maintaining a sterile environment.

At specific wavelengths (~245-265 nm), (UV) light inactivates quite a few
living things. As light is quantized, the purpleish color you see is due to e-
stepping down.

~~~
escherplex
My UVC bulbs deployed in a FL home water treatment system pipe out UV in the
region of 253.7nm. An ophthalmologist friend pointed out that unfiltered long
term exposure to these wavelengths first catalyzes conjunctivitis (pink eye)
then conditions go down hill from there. It's suggested that you don't stare
directly at sources of this purplish color for any protracted periods.

~~~
kale
Nope. Our bio hoods have a toggle switch. Lights off is in the middle, lights
on is one direction, UV sterilization is the other direction. To turn the
lights on, you have to turn the UV off.

------
leni536
The lattice spacing of silicon is ~0.54nm so 7nm is around 13 lattice spacing,
it's really impressive. Slowly but surely we will hit atomic limits.

~~~
eleitl
The node size do not correspond to a given dimension of a structure anymore,
it's computed property, from area of a given standard cell (e.g. SRAM cell).

~~~
Dylan16807
That's informative but doesn't disagree. It's not a 1:1 correspondence but
it's a pretty close correlation to the actual widths of things.

~~~
brilee
silicon is diamond cubic; 0.54 nm corresponds to 8/sqrt(3) radiuses worth. So
the diameter of silicon is 0.23nm, and 7nm = ~30 silicon atoms across.

------
BinaryIdiot
Wow, 7 nanometer is incredible! I wonder how small they can get silicon /
silicon-germanium based chips before we have to resort to other techniques
such as light processors (since light can be closer and even cross each other
without issue). 10 nanometers that they're introducing next year is also
incredible, at least to me since I'm not a hardware engineer and can't imagine
how difficult manufacturing these are.

~~~
prewett
I could be wrong, but I think optical processors would have serious
diffraction problems with a 7 nm feature size, since the wavelength of blue
light is somewhere around 300 nm.

As far as fabrication, one problem is that obviously you aren't using visible
light to etch features on your wafers. The x-rays must be fun to work with...
Not to mention, your photoresist would have to resist x-rays. Getting x-ray-
resisting photoresist on and off your wafer must be tricky. Since 7 nm is
about the size of several atoms, your wafer probably needs to be almost
perfectly pure, which can't be easy, either.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Hmm yeah I have no idea, I mostly read this which really intrigued me but I
don't really understand all of the technology and science behind it
[http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2010/2010072...](http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2010/20100727comp_sm.htm)

I had always gotten the impression that even if it they couldn't get as small
the impact of less heat and the ability to cross beams could allow them to be
denser. But like I said I don't really know what I'm talking about :)

~~~
pjc50
You can't cross light beams at 7nm, if you had a "crossroads" structure" it
would simply diffract round the corner and exit at all three other points.

------
JoachimS
Very interesting. Good to see that the article points out that going from
working transistors to commercial viable industrial process is also a big
challenge. There are a lot of technologies and industry players that need to
solve big problems before the node can start deliver. But that is what ITRS is
for.

Also, interesting to see how things like e-beam litography is pushed once
again at least a node into the future. We (as in they) are still able to tune
and optimize on the same infrastructure.

------
graycat
As I recall, there is microelectronics fab work in Taiwan, South Korea, and,
in the US, at IBM and Intel, at least. And maybe China and Russia are trying
to get caught up in fabs.

I wonder: What organization, really, is mostly responsible for the newer fabs?
I mean, do each of Samsung, Intel, IBM, etc. do everything on their own? Or is
there a main company, maybe Applied Materials, with some help from, say, some
small company for UV sources, some optics from, maybe, Nikon, some mechanical
pieces, etc., that does the real work for all the fabs?

7 nm -- what speed and power increases will that bring over 14 nm, 22 nm or
whatever is being manufactured now, etc.?

Long live Moore's law! It ain't over until the fat lady sings, and I don't
hear any fat lady yet!

~~~
timelined
IBM/Intel/Samsung buy tools from various companies. By "tools", I really mean
huge pieces of instrumentation that cost many (tens to hundreds) millions of
dollars from other companies that are used for the various processing steps
(deposition/growth of materials on wafers, patterning resists, etching, etc).
The development of each of these tools is immensely difficult and challenging
and making them talk to each other and designing manufacturing pipelines is
another immense challenge. IBM/Intel/Samsung's job is to design chips (a
immense challenge on its own), come up with a process to manufacture them, and
then take each of these very complex tools, integrate them into a
manufacturing pipeline (with QC), and manufacture the devices that they want.

~~~
graycat
How much is like _turn key_ and how much is lots of one off, proprietary
engineering and _system integration_?

I was guessing that maybe for the fabs themselves, mostly there was some one
company that delivered fabs. Or, why reinvent the wheel several times?

Sure, for the chip design, say, by Qualcomm, Samsung, Intel, IBM, that's a lot
of design software, know how, etc. And, sure, QC has to be one heck of an
Excedrin headache but with likely some long standing basic ideas for
_testability_.

------
nicholas73
The press articles about this generally are misleading in that they use
Silicon-Germanium as the catch phrase that's represents the breakthrough.
Whereas in fact SiGe processes have been available for at least a decade. I
know this because I developed chips for an IBM SiGe process a decade ago, and
in college I did a research paper on semiconductor "superlattices" using an
old textbook from our school library. It's not a new technology by any means.

IBM's 7nm is a great accomplishment for sure, but we really don't know
anything about how it was made from the articles. Essentially SiGe is a bit
more conductive and can switch faster than normal Si chips, thanks to quantum
tunneling.

------
icanhackit
Time to start working on the 7km chip. Fibre everywhere, content delivery
servers everywhere, game servers out the wazoo so my crappy media streaming
gadget or VR headset can remotely pull in the latest movies and games in 4K
with minimal lag. You could outfit a few of the world's major cities for the
cost of a new fab.

Unfortunately this won't sell new consumer hardware on an regular basis.

~~~
c0nnector
You can build an entire new industry around it.

Eveything as a service. Even hardware could become a service. You wouldn't
have to actually own it, instead pay a monthly fee and you have access to
produxt X. You get the latest models without any extras fees.

The advantage of having a service is that the customer is hooked and it's
harder to leave.

~~~
puranjay
These folks are trying something like that:
[https://saybyebuy.com/](https://saybyebuy.com/)

As an idea, I feel it's wonderful. It would massively reduce wastage.

~~~
rprospero
What scares me about proposals like this is that it's further stratification
of society into two separate classes: those who actually own everything and
those who must appease the owners.

For example, I can put £40 in my sock drawer every month and, in eight months,
I could buy a PS4 and use it for the rest of my life. I could then start save
that £40 toward a different purchase. Alternately, I could go with the site
you listed and pay £40 a month for the rest of my life just for that same PS4,
never making headway.

Now, you can point out that a PS4 is almost the definition of an unnecessary
luxury and that I don't have to pay the £40 monthly rental fee, and you'd be
right. I mostly went with that example because it was right on the front page
and such a terrible deal. Still, in the world where I can own things, I can
have the PS4 and the £40 a month, after a little over a half year of hardship,
while the rental society won't let me have that. Similarly, I can buy a DVD
and watch it forever, instead of shelling out for Netflix each month and
hoping that they don't drop that title.

~~~
glhaynes
_I could buy a PS4 and use it for the rest of my life_

If you're amazingly lucky. In actuality, you've got to replace it (or have it
repaired, which is usually almost as expensive) every few years because it
wears out.

And you've got to continue paying for electricity to run it all that time. And
the TV (and replacements/repairs for it) to play it on. And the electricity to
run the TV. And a payment for the dwelling in which it's housed. (Which you
can buy outright… but even if you do, the payments for upkeep and the taxes to
keep roads/etc coming to it end up being of a similar order…) Etc, etc.

In practice, unless we lived under a _radically_ different system (far more
different than [state] capitalism with/without a guaranteed minimum income, or
communism), we pretty much have to have a system in which _everyone_ can
afford to continue making regular payments on many if not most of the
expensive things they use.

~~~
joshuapants
In the "rental" situation you still pay for all of those things, but with the
added overhead of corporate bureaucracy.

------
LoSboccacc
Still in research phase, from a company known for having 10% yields last time
they innovated in the processor space

Also hasn't Ibm just sold its division to global foundries? So are they double
dipping as usual by licensing them new tech separately?

~~~
BostonEnginerd
IBM just sold their division to GF -- but they're maintaining an R&D only
operation. IBM, GF and Samsung are all part of the "Common Platform" to share
R&D costs:

[http://www.commonplatform.com/](http://www.commonplatform.com/)

------
rurban
YES! Kill Intel, PPC64 everywhere :)

It will not happen, I know, but "Wouldn't it be nice" was always one of my
favorite Beach Boys song (Pet Sounds!)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofByti7A4uM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofByti7A4uM)

This is THE chance.

~~~
vex
Why exactly do you care so much?

~~~
POWERfan
I can't speak for the GP, but POWER is a true RISC ISA, and many prefer it
just for that reason.

~~~
megablast
There is no such thing as CISC or RISC anymore, what with micro ops.

------
zxexz
I know nothing about silicon fab, but I can't help but wonder how they
mitigate the effects of quantum tunneling at such a small scale?

------
nickpsecurity
It's neat but will only benefit the largest companies with the most elite
developers. I've learned a lot about hardware development in past year for
purposes of imagining clean-slate, subversion-resistant chips. The work it
takes to get the 90nm and below chips working, especially inexpensively, is
pretty mind boggling with many aspects still dark arts shrouded in trade
secrets. Many firms stay at 130-180nm levels with quite a few still selling
tech closer to a micron than a 28nm chip. Tools to overcome these challenges
cost over a million a seat.

So, seeing another process shrink doesn't excite me given we haven't tapped
the potential of what we already have. Lots of technologies help: EDA; FPGA's:
S-ASIC's; multi-project wafers; ASIC-proven I.P. And so on. Yet, even 350nm
still isn't very accessible to most companies wanting to make a chip because
the tools, I.P., and expertise are too expensive (or scarce sometimes). Yet,
the benefits are real in so many use-cases (esp security). I'd like to see
more companies dramatically bringing the costs down and eliminating other
barriers to entry with affordable prices.

Example of the problems and what kind of work we're looking at:
[http://eejournal.com/archives/articles/20110104-elephant/](http://eejournal.com/archives/articles/20110104-elephant/)

Example direction to go in:
[http://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/2008/08/megahard-corp-
open...](http://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/2008/08/megahard-corp-open-source-
eda-as.html)

I think the best model, though, is to do what the EDA vendors did: invest
money into smart people, including in academia, to solve the NP-hard problems
of each tool phase with incremental improvements over time. I'm thinking a
non-profit with continuous funding by the likes of Google, Facebook,
Microsoft, Wall St firms, etc. A membership fee plus licensing tools at cost,
which continues to go down, might do it. Start with simpler problems such as
place-and-route and ASIC gate-level simulation to deliver fast, easy-to-use,
low cost tools. Savings against EDA tools bring in more members and customers
whose money can be invested in maintaining those tools plus funding hardest
ones (esp high-level synthesis). Also, money goes into good logic libraries
for affordable process nodes. Non-commercial use is free but I.P. must be
shared with members.

Setup right, this thing could fund the hard stuff with commercial activity and
benefit from academic/FOSS style submissions. With right structure, it also
won't go away due to an acquisition or someone running out of money. Open
source projects don't die: they just become unmaintained, temporarily or
permanently. Someone can pick up the ball later.

Thoughts?

------
chriswilmer
I don't think the diameter of a DNA strand is 2.5nm...

------
santaclaus
Return of the PowerPC Mac?

~~~
ianlevesque
Ha, not likely. But because IBM and GF will manufacture for 3rd parties
there's at least hope for AMD now if they get a better design.

~~~
tracker1
I don't think that AMDs designs are particularly bad... an FX-8350 can go toe
to toe with a higher end i5. Of course that's without the power savings of a
newer process.

I do hope that AMD comes up with something with a single-core performance
competitive to an i7 with a power envelope in the ballpark.

~~~
rasz_pl
>single-core performance competitive to an i7

best AMD chip cant even compete with cheapest Pentium(celeron) when it comes
to IPC

~~~
tracker1
But it will support 32GB of ECC ram and more than two simultaneous processes.
;-)

------
warrenmiller
Did someone say ASIC?

