VTFET extension (Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors) is the new architecture developed by IBM and Samsung for the making of new vertical transistors that will allow scaling beyond nanosheets (nanosheetalso called GAAFET transistors).
According to the two companies, the innovation has the potential to multiply by 2 the performance for the same consumption or of reduce energy consumption by 85% with the same performance compared to traditional FinFET transistors. Concretely, the new design could extend theautonomy from a smart phone from a few days to a whole week. The innovation is the result of the work of the two companies at the Albany Nanotech Complex in Albany, New York.
We were illustrating some of Intel’s bubbling innovations in packaging and transistors a few days ago, and Samsung and IBM’s goal is no different: to enable the industry to continue to deliver improvements ever-increasing speeds without causing consumption to explode. Brief, continue to perpetrate Moore’s Lawthat the number of transistors doubles approximately every two years.
They have to do this smaller and smaller transistors to cram into a given area and the new VTFET causes the transistors to be built perpendicular to the chip surface with vertical current flow, top to bottom and vice versa. According to the companies, the design also allows for higher currents and lower losses.
A double improvement in performance is equivalent to many generations of production processes and therefore several years of development. A truly remarkable result considering that IBM recently announced a 2-nanometer chip made up of 50 billion transistors in the space of a fingernail: the new VTFETs represent an even greater advance. IBM has already made experimental chips based on VTFET transistors in order to evaluate their future implementation in real products.