IBM and Samsung’s new transistors could give phones battery life of one week

IBM and Samsung are two behemoths of the technology world who claim to have something incredibly exciting in the works.  

As per details, the two titans have announced a revolutionary design for stacking transistors vertically on a chip. This announcement was made on the first day of the IEDM 2021 conference in San Francisco, California. 

Current processors and SoCs feature transistors lying flat on the silicon surface, with the electric current flowing from side-to-side. In contrast, the new Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors (VTFET) design comprises transistors sitting perpendicular to each other, with the current flowing vertically. 

According to IBM and Samsung, the new design offers two significant benefits.  

First off, it will help IBM expand beyond its existing nanosheet technology. Secondly, extreme improvements in either of performance or battery life are expected. As per estimates, in fact, the VTFET design will result in processors that are either twice as fast or use 85 percent less power than traditional chip designs. 

The two companies claim that the process may eventually make way for technology that lets phones last a whole week on just a single charge! Moreover, it could make energy-intensive processes like crypto-mining more power-efficient and, as a result, more environment-friendly. 

IBM and Samsung haven’t given an exact timeframe for when they plan to commercialize this design. It is worth noting that Intel is also pushing for super-efficient chips, with the company aiming to finalize its angstrom-scale chips by 2024, which is quite step up over the nanometer technology that we are used to.