IBM announces 7 nanometer chips.

It is here. The sub-ten nanometer feature size chip has arrived.

IBM said on Thursday that it had made working versions of ultradense computer chips, with roughly four times the capacity of today's most powerful chips.

The announcement, made on behalf of an international consortium led by IBM, the giant computer company, is part of an effort to manufacture the most advanced computer chips in New York's Hudson Valley, where IBM is investing $3 billion in a private-public partnership with New York State, GlobalFoundries, Samsung and equipment vendors.

What does this mean in English?  The diameter of a silicon atom is roughly 0.1 nanometers. These guys are selling a commercial chip where the features of chip, like the wires and the capacitors and the transistors are seven (7) nanometers wide.

That's 70 atoms wide, kiddies.

Can they make it smaller? Probably. Can they cut it in half again, down to 35 atoms wide, in another two years? Maybe. If there's money in it.

In the mean time, I'm going to be interested to see what this new 7 nanometer fab size can do. That's some serious business.

The Phantom