- [Narrator] Semiconductors,

the foundation of data processing chips

at the core of computing,

are a critical component in everything

from our appliances to cellphones,

transportation systems, infrastructure,

and even national defense systems.

Transistors are a type of semiconductor.

The more transistors on a chip,

the more calculations it can perform

using the same amount of power.

The transistors are manufactured on silicon wafers

which contain hundreds of individual chips,

sort of like a high-tech cookie sheet.

Four years ago, IBM created a revolutionary architecture

designed to produce a chip

with transistor components as small as five nanometers.

Building on that breakthrough technology, this year,

IBM has produced the world's first two nanometer chip.

Its tiniest components are smaller than a strand of DNA.

Designed and produced by IBM Research

at its semiconductor research facility in Albany, New York,

this wafer contains hundreds of chips

the size of a fingernail,

each with 50 billion two nanometer transistors.

This technology is designed to help improve

calculation speed or boost energy efficiency,

depending on the job.

Where speedy complex calculations are the goal,

IBM's two nanometer design

is projected to achieve 45% higher performance

than today's seven nanometer chips.

Or if energy efficiency is the priority,

they are projected to use 75% less energy

than seven nanometer chips.

This breakthrough will help accelerate advancements

in areas such as AI, 5G and 6G, edge computing,

autonomous systems, and space exploration.

The two nanometer chip continues IBM Research's legacy

of contributions to semiconductor innovations.

These include the first implementation

of five nanometer and seven nanometer process technologies,

single-cell DRAM, the Dennard scaling laws,

chemically amplified photoresists, and many others.

Now that IBM Research has made it possible,

it shouldn't be too long before two nanometer technology

becomes the industry standard.

This kind of innovation from IBM Research

has kept IBM's technology on the cutting edge

from two nanometers chips,

to platforms like IBM Power Systems and IBM Z,

to quantum computing and beyond.