Vertical Semiconductor Energy Breakthrough Like Over Week Per Cellphone Charge

IBM and Samsung Electronics jointly announced a breakthrough in semiconductor design utilizing a new vertical transistor architecture that demonstrates a path to scaling beyond nanosheet, and has the potential to reduce energy usage by 85 percent compared to a scaled fin field-effect transistor (finFET).

This collaborative approach to innovation makes the Albany Nanotech Complex a world-leading ecosystem for semiconductor research and creates a strong innovation pipeline, helping to address manufacturing demands and accelerate the growth of the global chip industry.

The new Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors, or VTFET, IBM and Samsung have successfully implemented transistors that are built perpendicular to the surface of the chip with a vertical, or up-and-down, current flow. Regular transistors lay flat.

This could lead to :

* Potential device architecture that enables semiconductor device scaling to continue beyond nanosheet.
* Cell phone batteries that could go over a week without being charged, instead of days.
* Energy intensive processes, such as cryptomining operations and data encryption, could require significantly less energy and have a smaller carbon footprint.
* Continued expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) and edge devices with lower energy needs, allowing them to operate in more diverse environments like ocean buoys, autonomous vehicles, and spacecraft.

IBM announced the 2 nm chip technology breakthrough which will allow a chip to fit up to 50 billion transistors in a space the size of a fingernail. VTFET innovation focuses on a whole new dimension, which offers a pathway to the continuation of Moore’s Law.