IBM has released details of its next advance in chip manufacturing technology, which it says could keep innovation in semiconductor miniaturization going for another 10 years, reports The New York Times. The company said in a press release June 25 that its new sub-1 nm (nanometer) chip is built with revolutionary “nanostack” 3D chip architecture.

The Times says the tech industry has for decades relied on the ability of semiconductor manufacturers to pack more data-processing power into tiny computer chips, making the smartphones that fit in a hand today more capable than the computers that filled entire rooms 40 years ago. But many wondered if the industry was reaching the limits of miniaturization. IBM’s new chip appears to assuage those concerns.

IBM says the chip packs nearly 100 billion transistors onto a chip the size of a fingernail, nearly twice the density of IBM’s 2 nm chip, unveiled in 2021. Enabled by a series of structural and material innovations, the technology demonstrates how continued gains in performance and efficiency remain possible even as chip features approach atomic dimensions, the chipmaker said. 

Published technical results report the new chip is projected to offer a substantial leap in capability — up to 50% more performance, or 70% greater energy efficiency than IBM’s 2 nm node chips — supercharging compute for applications ranging from generative AI and cloud infrastructure to next-generation electronic devices.