IT Blog

IBM is heralding the return of Moore’s Law—the idea that the power of microchips will double every two years—with a new chip design that fits 50 billion transistors on a piece of silicon the size of your thumbnail.

The new chip is the result of a mind-bogglingly tiny 2-nanometer technology, where each transistor is less than 2 nanometers wide, or about the width of two strands of human DNA. It was designed at IBM’s research lab in Albany, New York. (By way of comparison, Apple’s iPhone 12 and Samsung’s Galaxy S21 phones use 5-nanometer chips.)

With greater transistor density, each chip has more processing power and will require less power to run. This will have big implications for the tech product makers that use the chips. IBM says the new chips could make everything from phones to smart appliances to self-driving cars run more efficiently.