IBM just produced the first SRAM chip — a simple sort of high-speed computer memory — on a new 22-nanometer manufacturing process. To put that achievement into perspective, you could fit more than three thousand of these minuscule chip components across the width of your average strand of human hair.
It’s just a proof of concept at this point, but will translate to full-scale processor production by 2011, according to Big Blue and its research partners at Advanced Micro Devices, Toshiba, STMicroelectronics, and Freescale. Before making that leap, chip makers will make a stop at 32nm in 2009 or 2010. IBM confidently boasts that “no other company or consortium can match” its high-tech 32nm technology; that’s a not-too-subtle jab at semiconductor titan Intel, which has similar process improvements of its own under development.
