IBM To Invest $3 Billion For Semiconductor Research 68
Taco Cowboy points out that many news outlets are reporting that IBM plans to spend $3 billion on semiconductor research and development in the next five years. The first goal is to build chips whose electronic components, called transistors, have features measuring just 7 nanometers, the company announced Wednesday. For comparison, that distance is about a thousandth the width of a human hair, a tenth the width of a virus particle, or the width of 16 potassium atoms side by side. The second goal is to choose among a range of more radical departures from today's silicon chip technology -- a monumental engineering challenge necessary to sustain progress in the computing industry. Among the options are carbon nanotubes and graphene; silicon photonics; quantum computing; brainlike architectures; and silicon substitutes that could run faster even if components aren't smaller. "In the next 10 years, we believe there will be fundamentally new systems that are much more efficient at solving problems or solving problems that are unsolvable today," T.C. Chen, IBM Research's vice president of science and technology, told CNET
Re: transistor!? (Score:1)
And they're gonna make 'em the width of 16 opossums layed side by side!
Comparisons (Score:1)
The first goal is to build chips whose electronic components, called transistors, have features measuring just 7 nanometers, the company announced Wednesday. For comparison, that distance is about a thousandth the width of a human hair, a tenth the width of a virus particle, or the width of 16 potassium atoms side by side.
I'm pretty sure slashdot users who care about semiconductor announcements already have a sense of scale of transistors, so don't need this layman dumbing down. For reference, this is about half the size of Intels latest process.
Next Up: (Score:4, Informative)
"IBM petitions Congress for increased H1B quota to support semiconductor research."
Not for this stuff. (Score:1)
This type of research actually takes very specific talents and long periods of education and study (like a PhD in semi conductor physics). Meaning, any H1-bs they get for this is actually legitimate - and the people they get probably won't even fall under the H1-b program anyway.
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"IBM petitions Congress for increased H1B quota to support semiconductor research."
What makes you think any of that 3 billion would be spent in the US regardless?
As likely, the entire R&D unit has already been outsourced to India (or wherever).
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Also - R&D is one of the last things sent abroad. You outsource things that are easy and repetitive - which R&D is not.
I've actually seen quite a bit of R&D work outsourced to Russia (to former nuclear scientists) and more recently India. However, usually, this is theoretical or modeling and simulation work that doesn't require significant investments in sensitive equipment or the infrastructure to support it. On the other hand, most of the work IBM is talking about appears to be in advanced materials science. which tends to be pretty equipment intensive and is thus unlikely to be moved from their current locations i
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What makes you think any of that 3 billion would be spent in the US regardless?
Well, the IBM press release specifically states the money will go to Yorktown and Albany, New York, Almaden, California, and Europe. (Most likely this means IBM-Zurich, where the Scanning-Tunelling Microscope or STM was invented).
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What makes you think any of that 3 billion would be spent in the US regardless?
Well, the IBM press release specifically states the money will go to Yorktown and Albany, New York, Almaden, California, and Europe. (Most likely this means IBM-Zurich, where the Scanning-Tunelling Microscope or STM was invented).
I couldn't find that, so thank you -
On the other hand, last time I checked Europe wasn't in the US :-)
It would be interesting to know how much of the money is going where -
Nice but (Score:3)
What have semiconductors been bringing us lately, besides the newest social apps and web-enabled office-collaboration bloatware?
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Light [cree.com].
And who doesn't like anything that brings light [wikipedia.org]?
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Besides the battery life to enable people to get through all day on a laptop without plugging in, or multiple days on smartphones as powerful as laptops of 5 years ago?
Dumbed down summary (Score:2)
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Global Foundries doesn't want the chipfabs (Score:2)
IBM chipfabs are a decade out of date. What they want is the patent portfolio and the people who created it. When IBM says they will 'invest' what they mean is that they will pay GF to design and make their chips for them.
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Close. GF wants the IP and people for chip making. IBM wants the IP and people for chip designing.
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Huh? The Power8 are 22nm same as Intel Haswell and frankly in most ways better than the Haswell.
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No no not the CHIPS - the foundries which make them. A Korean chipfab or Intel for that matter, will invest more than a BILLION dollars a year in the manufacturing process just to keep current. IBM does not. This results in much higher costs per unit and a much higher reject rate.
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Fishkill name (Score:3)
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That didn't stop the buffoons in PETA from demanding they change the name (they helpfully suggested 'Fishsave'). Somehow they missed all the other 'kills' in NYS (Catskill, Otterkill, Freshkill, etc).
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As for the difficulty of going from 22nm to 14nm, the scaling is not so much the problem. Rather, it's that everyone (except intel, who did it at 22nm) is transitioning from planar to finfet technology. You are absolutely correct that that transition is very challenging
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We only have semiconductors because of space.
Well, yea. But that stuff came from supernovae many billion years ago. We don't need space now to have semiconductors since that stuff, particular silicon won't go anywhere.
I suspect however that you are thinking that the US space program is responsible for semiconductors. That is nonsense. We would have them anyway even in the absence of contributions from any agency of the US including the Department of Defense (who was a far bigger contributor to IC R&D than NASA was by at least an order of magni
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solid state *integrated circuit* tech was made for missile (defense and space) use first. Space program has indeed been a driver for that.
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you are posting nonsense, with a link to a system in F-14. You are decades off. No, original solid state integrated circuits made at Texas Instruments were used in ICBM in late 50s
Space tech has driven electronic advances
Ms. Ginni Rometty - a tard (Score:5, Informative)
She's been driving IBM into the ground and even investors wonder if you can continue to cut your way to earnings. [netnetweb.com] IBM used to be a company that could and would compete in any market it chose, now it's a shell of its former self. Sad really when you think of the great things IBM has done, and the not so great. [wikipedia.org]
They've started entire industries and markets only to see them taken away by competitors because their executives weren't agile. In a lot of respects I think IBM will be gone in 10 years because of retarded management decision making and focusing too much on EPS.
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Thanks to the proliferation of Ivy League business school education, this type of management style will continue to spread to every corner of corporate America.
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Right. IBM is a shadow of a former self. But, in many countries outside U.S., IBM, has locked customers, big companies, that still use IBM old machinery.
IBM, is one of those companies who will still loose a lot of its customers in the U.S., but, will keep on going, in other countries for decades.
In my country, IBM people is famous for been "old grumpy" men, like Steve Jobs, describe them. They do have junior executives, but, they are really "disguised old men", that come from Ivy League schools. They have s
potassium measure of unit (Score:2)
well, 16 potassium atoms, well that clears things up.
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well, 16 potassium atoms, well that clears things up.
It is odd that they use "potassium atoms" as a measurement for something made out of silicon. A silicon atom has a diameter of about 230pm, so 7nm is about 30 silicon atoms.
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Um, that isn't what "hi-K" means...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
$3B? (Score:2)
$3B doesn't go a long way if you want to play with the big boys in semiconductor research.
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So your new fancy solution is 5 years old by the time it hits mass production.
" Ahh, I have a wonderful new transistor in my lab - let's build a fab" -- 5 years later, production.
You need to do these things in parallel. That's why it's a big boy game.