I wrote abut IBM and its plans for a 7nm computer chip last year in a July 11, 2014 posting, which featured IBM and mention of HP Labs and other company’s plans for shrinking their computer chips. Almost one year later, IBM has announced, in a July 9, 2015 IBM news release on PRnewswire.com the accomplishment of a working 7nm test chip,

An alliance led by IBM Research (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it has produced the semiconductor industry’s first 7nm (nanometer) node test chips with functioning transistors.  The breakthrough, accomplished in partnership with GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung at SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY Poly CNSE), could result in the ability to place more than 20 billion tiny switches — transistors — on the fingernail-sized chips that power everything from smartphones to spacecraft.

To achieve the higher performance, lower power and scaling benefits promised by 7nm technology, researchers had to bypass conventional semiconductor manufacturing approaches. Among the novel processes and techniques pioneered by the IBM Research alliance were a number of industry-first innovations, most notably Silicon Germanium (SiGe) channel transistors and Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography integration at multiple levels.

Industry experts consider 7nm technology crucial to meeting the anticipated demands of future cloud computing and Big Data systems, cognitive computing, mobile products and other emerging technologies. Part of IBM’s $3 billion, five-year investment in chip R&D (announced in 2014), this accomplishment was made possible through a unique public-private partnership with New York State and joint development alliance with GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Samsung and equipment suppliers. The team is based at SUNY Poly’s NanoTech Complex in Albany [New York state].

“For business and society to get the most out of tomorrow’s computers and devices, scaling to 7nm and beyond is essential,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president and director of IBM Research. “That’s why IBM has remained committed to an aggressive basic research agenda that continually pushes the limits of semiconductor technology. Working with our partners, this milestone builds on decades of research that has set the pace for the microelectronics industry, and positions us to advance our leadership for years to come.”

Microprocessors utilizing 22nm and 14nm technology power today’s servers, cloud data centers and mobile devices, and 10nm technology is well on the way to becoming a mature technology. The IBM Research-led alliance achieved close to 50 percent area scaling improvements over today’s most advanced technology, introduced SiGe channel material for transistor performance enhancement at 7nm node geometries, process innovations to stack them below 30nm pitch and full integration of EUV lithography at multiple levels. These techniques and scaling could result in at least a 50 percent power/performance improvement for next generation mainframe and POWER systems that will power the Big Data, cloud and mobile era.

“Governor Andrew Cuomo’s trailblazing public-private partnership model is catalyzing historic innovation and advancement. Today’s [July 8, 2015] announcement is just one example of our collaboration with IBM, which furthers New York State’s global leadership in developing next generation technologies,” said Dr. Michael Liehr, SUNY Poly Executive Vice President of Innovation and Technology and Vice President of Research.  “Enabling the first 7nm node transistors is a significant milestone for the entire semiconductor industry as we continue to push beyond the limitations of our current capabilities.”

“Today’s announcement marks the latest achievement in our long history of collaboration to accelerate development of next-generation technology,” said Gary Patton, CTO and Head of Worldwide R&D at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “Through this joint collaborative program based at the Albany NanoTech Complex, we are able to maintain our focus on technology leadership for our clients and partners by helping to address the development challenges central to producing a smaller, faster, more cost efficient generation of semiconductors.”

The 7nm node milestone continues IBM’s legacy of historic contributions to silicon and semiconductor innovation. They include the invention or first implementation of the single cell DRAM, the Dennard Scaling Laws, chemically amplified photoresists, copper interconnect wiring, Silicon on Insulator, strained engineering, multi core microprocessors, immersion lithography, high speed SiGe, High-k gate dielectrics, embedded DRAM, 3D chip stacking and Air gap insulators.

In 2014, they were talking about carbon nanotubes with regard to the 7nm chip, this shift to silicon germanium is interesting.

Sebastian Anthony in a July 9, 2015 article for Ars Technica offers some intriguing insight into the accomplishment and the technology (Note: A link has been removed),

… While it should be stressed that commercial 7nm chips remain at least two years away, this test chip from IBM and its partners is extremely significant for three reasons: it’s a working sub-10nm chip (this is pretty significant in itself); it’s the first commercially viable sub-10nm FinFET logic chip that uses silicon-germanium as the channel material; and it appears to be the first commercially viable design produced with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography.

…

Technologically, SiGe and EUV are both very significant. SiGe has higher electron mobility than pure silicon, which makes it better suited for smaller transistors. The gap between two silicon nuclei is about 0.5nm; as the gate width gets ever smaller (about 7nm in this case), the channel becomes so small that the handful of silicon atoms can’t carry enough current. By mixing some germanium into the channel, electron mobility increases, and adequate current can flow. Silicon generally runs into problems at sub-10nm nodes, and we can expect Intel and TSMC to follow a similar path to IBM, GlobalFoundries, and Samsung (aka the Common Platform alliance).

EUV lithography is an more interesting innovation. Basically, as chip features get smaller, you need a narrower beam of light to etch those features accurately, or you need to use multiple patterning (which we won’t go into here). The current state of the art for lithography is a 193nm ArF (argon fluoride) laser; that is, the wavelength is 193nm wide. Complex optics and multiple painstaking steps are required to etch 14nm features using a 193nm light source. EUV has a wavelength of just 13.5nm, which will handily take us down into the sub-10nm realm, but so far it has proven very difficult and expensive to deploy commercially (it has been just around the corner for quite a few years now).

If you’re interested in the nuances, I recommend reading Anthony’s article in its entirety.

One final comment, there was no discussion of electrodes or other metallic components associated with computer chips. The metallic components are a topic of some interest to me (anyway), given some research published by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last year. From my Oct. 14, 2014 posting,

Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has revealed a new property of metal nanoparticles, in this case, silver. From an Oct. 12, 2014 news item on ScienceDaily,

A surprising phenomenon has been found in metal nanoparticles: They appear, from the outside, to be liquid droplets, wobbling and readily changing shape, while their interiors retain a perfectly stable crystal configuration.

The research team behind the finding, led by MIT professor Ju Li, says the work could have important implications for the design of components in nanotechnology, such as metal contacts for molecular electronic circuits. [my emphasis added]

This discovery and others regarding materials and phase changes at ever diminishing sizes hint that a computer with a functioning 7nm chip might be a bit further off than IBM is suggesting.