IBM Unveils World’s First Sub-1nm Chip Technology, Extending Moore’s Law

June 26 — IBM has officially announced the world’s first producible chip technology with features smaller than 1 nanometer, marking a milestone breakthrough for the semiconductor industry. The technology employs an innovative “nanostack” architecture that vertically stacks transistors in two layers on a silicon chip. The prototype reaches a process node of 0.7nm and packs approximately 100 billion transistors onto an area the size of a fingernail — double the density of IBM’s most advanced technology from 2021. Scientists believe the new architecture could eventually shrink transistor dimensions down to 0.1nm.

This breakthrough means Moore’s Law — the observation that the number of transistors on a chip doubles roughly every two years — can be extended for at least another decade. Over the past 15 years, transistor sizes have approached the physical limit of quantum interference (just tens of nanometers). IBM’s new architecture overcomes this challenge by “building upward” rather than continuing to “squeeze horizontally.” The main industry challenge now is integrating IBM’s new chip technology into the global manufacturing supply chain and ultimately into end-user devices.

The announcement comes as global tech giants race to develop semiconductors capable of handling increasingly heavy AI workloads. The technology is expected to pave the way for faster, more energy-efficient computing systems in the future.