International Business Machines (IBM) and Samsung have announced during the IEDM conference in San Francisco revealed a breakthrough in semiconductor design by unveiling a new design for stacking transistors vertically on a chip, reports Engadget.
In the new Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors (VTFET), transistors sit perpendicular to one another and the current flows through them vertically. For those who are unaware, in the current processors and system-on-chips, transistors lie flat on the surface and the electric current flows from side to side.
This new kind of transistor could allow for a greater density of these components per chip compared to anything that is available at present. Thus, there’s potential for improved power efficiency or performance.
With this new design, IBM and Samsung hope to extend Moore’s Law beyond the nanosheet threshold and waste less energy. The companies also say that it will double the performance or use 85 percent less power than chips designed with FinFET transistors.
However, IBM and Samsung aren’t the only ones working on these new types of transistors. The chipset giant Intel is also experimenting with chips stacked above each other to save area, reduce interconnect lengths, and save energy to make the chips more cost-efficient and better performing. Intel aims to finalize the design for angstrom-scale chips by 2024 using its new “Intel 20A” node and RibbonFET transistors.
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