NEW YORK: IBM on Thursday unveiled a powerful new chip which the company says could boost computing power of “everything from smartphones to spacecraft”.

The company unveiled the industry’s first seven-nanometer chip that could hold more than 20 billion tiny switches or transistors for improved computing power.

The new chips could help meet demands of future cloud computing and Big Data systems, cognitive computing, mobile products and other emerging technologies, according to IBM, which developed the chip as part of a $3 billion research effort with Samsung and GlobalFoundries at the State University of New York at Albany.

Most chips today in PCs and other devices use microprocessors between 14 and 22 nanometers. The new technology this represents “at least a 50 per cent power-performance improvement”.

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2015

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