While the current CPUs and other chips are reaching their maximum step by step, a breakthrough that might open a new door to higher performance chips is opened. Samsung and IBM have announced their new VTFET technology, which is said to be lowering energy usage by 85%, and that is a lot.
Denser and more power-efficient
Vertical Transport Field-Effect Transistors, VTFET, places transistors vertically opposite finFET. Vertical placement is a massive advancement since it shortens the « cables » between transistors that generate a lot of heat. This placement also enables placing more transistors in a chip of the same size compared to finFET. While more transistors mean more performance, the lesser heat is likely to open a new door to increase the clock speeds, which directly translates into a performance leap.
IBM has shared a video explaining the new technology:
The new advancement has the potential to carry computing to its next era. The data centers and servers might see chips that increase the performance by a lot with the same amount of cores or might come with more cores that work at much higher clock speeds. The low-power IoT chips may use much lesser energy, which might enable doing much more calculations with the same power. Even laptops or PCs can get a huge performance leap with the same battery life or last way longer.
The chipmakers will be able to use this 85% reduced power headroom by hugely increasing the performance or they might just choose to use it as it is, increasing the battery life of battery-depended devices. Both ways, it is very exciting news for all kinds of computing.