On Thursday, IBM announced it has created a 2-nanometer chip, the smallest, most powerful microchip yet developed.
The way to improve a chip's performance is to increase the number of transistors — the core elements that process data — without increasing its overall size. The new 2-nanometer chips are roughly the size of a fingernail, and contain 50 billion transistors, each about the size of two DNA strands, according to IBM vice president of hybrid cloud research Mukesh Khare.
The new chip is expected to achieve 45% higher performance — and about 75% lower energy usage — than today's most advanced 7-nanometer chips. With 2-nanometer chips, cell phone batteries could last four times longer, laptops could get markedly faster and the carbon footprints of data centers could be slashed as they rely on more energy efficient chips.