IBM has unveiled a new chip design that could cram 100 billion transistors onto a surface the size of a fingernail — a breakthrough the company claims is the world’s first known chip technology below 1 nanometre. The prototype, built using what IBM calls NanoStack architecture, performed 50% better than its own 2nm chip and was 70% more energy efficient in tests. But the company cautioned that the technology will not be ready for production for several years.
Transistors are the building blocks of silicon chips, powering everything from smartphones to data centres that handle streaming, online banking and the generative AI boom. The more transistors manufacturers can squeeze onto a chip, the more powerful and efficient it becomes. For decades, transistor density has doubled roughly every two years — a trend known as Moore’s Law — but experts broadly agree that this pace cannot continue indefinitely as transistors approach atomic scales.
“IBM unveils world's first sub-1nm chip design, cramming 100 billion transistors on a fingernail-sized chip, but production years away.”
To extend the law, chip designers have been moving from flat, horizontal layouts to 3D structures that stack transistors vertically. IBM’s approach goes further, layering sheets of transistors on top of each other. Jay Gambetta, director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow, described the NanoStack tech as a “landmark moment” for the future of chips. “With our new NanoStack architecture, we’re not just making smaller transistors, we’re reinventing how chips are built to deliver dramatically more power and energy efficiency,” he said.
Professor Alan Woodward, a computer scientist at Surrey University, compared the design to urban architecture. “IBM’s NanoStack is like proposing a 100-storey skyscraper,” he said, adding that in his view, the firm’s closest rivals … (the source text cuts off). The current industry-standard chip size is around 2 nanometres. IBM’s new tech is estimated to be the equivalent of about 0.7nm. The company previously debuted its 2nm chip tech in 2021, claiming similar leaps in performance and energy efficiency at that time.
The announcement comes as the race to shrink chips intensifies, with manufacturers seeking ever-smaller nodes to power next-generation devices. IBM’s breakthrough suggests that even as physical limits loom, innovation in chip architecture may keep Moore’s Law alive — at least for a while longer.