IBM has presented chip technology below the one nanometer mark, whose production technology is marked as 0.7 nm, or seven angstroms. The company describes it as the smallest and most powerful computer chip technology to date, but such naming has been publicly criticized by Elon Musk.
The director of the Tesla and SpaceX companies claims that the label “0.7 nanometers” can mislead users, because it does not represent the actual physical size of the transistors or the width of their most important elements.
Musk believes that manufacturing processes should be named according to the number of atoms corresponding to the width of the chip’s smallest physical feature. In his opinion, such a system would provide a more accurate representation of the real dimensions of semiconductor technology.
The IBM 0.7 nm process is not a measure of the actual width of the transistor
In the technical documentation, IBM admitted that the mark of seven angstroms, or 0.7 nm, no longer corresponds to the actual width of the metal lines. The name is a generational designation of a new manufacturing process, not a literal measure of a specific component inside the transistor.
The company states that seven angstroms, as with other modern designations of manufacturing processes, refers to a generation of chips made with a specific set of manufacturing technologies. In the earlier stages of semiconductor development, the number of nanometers was more directly related to the physical dimensions of individual elements, but that connection disappeared over time.
The IBM 0.7 nm process is based on nanosheet technology and nanostack architecture, which enables vertical stacking of transistors. Instead of placing the elements next to each other, the transistors are arranged in several levels, which increases their density on the limited surface area of the chip.
The names of manufacturing processes have not been directly related to the actual dimensions of transistors for a long time. One of the more famous examples is Intel’s decision from 2021 to rename its 10 nm process to Intel 7.
The change was, in part, to align the market positioning of Intel’s technology with the marks of TSMC’s competing processes. Although different manufacturers used similar names, they did not necessarily indicate the same physical dimensions, transistor density, or performance level.
Musk’s criticism therefore reopens the question of how useful modern manufacturing process designations are for comparing chips. IBM does not dispute that the number 0.7 nm is not the actual measurement of transistors, but uses it as a designation of a new generation of technology.