IBM to invest $3b for redesigning computer chips

IBM announced a $3 billion investment program in research and development for processor technologies of the future. The investment is aimed at preserving IBM’s business leadership role in producing the breakthroughs necessary to stay on track with Moore’s Law – the prediction by Intel chairman emeritus Gordon Moore that the number of basic components, or transistors, on a chip will double every couple of years.

Only a handful of other chip companies, such as Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., will be able to match this kind of initiative. IBM hopes to find ways to scale and shrink silicon chips to make them more efficient, and research new materials to use in making chips, such as carbon nanotubes, which are more stable than silicon and are also heat resistant and can provide faster connections.

$3 billion is an impressive figure, Big Blue – which said it would spend that money on chip R&D over the next five years – will need a lot more than that to compete in the kingdom of Intel.

"In the next 10 years computing hardware systems will be fundamentally different as our scientists and engineers push the limits of semiconductor innovations to explore a post-silicon future," said IBM Systems and Technology Group senior vice president Tom Rosamilia on Wednesday.

IBM maintained there is urgent need for new material to power chips of the future along with "new computing platforms to solve problems that are unsolvable or difficult to solve today".

The first research program to be funded under the new plan will be so-called “7 nanometer and beyond” silicon technology. IBM’s scientists will try to push the limits of silicon chips to 7 nanometers (7 billionths of a meter) and below. That figure refers to the width between electrical circuits. It is more than 1,400 times more narrow than a human hair. Such manufacturing will test the ability of chip makers to miniaturize their designs without running afoul of the laws of physics.

The second program will explore alternative technologies for a post-silicon era. Silicon has been the basic material for a semiconductor chip for decades, but it is running into physical limits.

One substance IBM has already researched is graphene, a pure carbon through which the company says electrons move 10 times faster than in silicon. The company plans to invest more in this area.

The new chips would allow for faster computing processes that could lead to artificial intelligence and high power cognitive computing. The company hopes the investment will lead to technology that allows computer systems to emulate the brain's efficiency, size and power usage, IBM said.

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