IBM Announces Computer Chips More Powerful Than Any in Existence

Pretty awesome that someone besides Intel is managing to keep up. Lithography is cut in half compared to Intel's Broadwell and upcoming Skylake microarchitectures (basically, more transistors spaced closer together = faster chips, theoretically without increasing power consumption or heat output).

But here's the kicker:

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IBM also declined to speculate on when it might begin commercial manufacturing of this technology generation.

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A major barrier in bringing new architecture and die shrinks to the mass market is the yield. Making these chips requires the utmost precision and always has a margin of error (meaning, in the simplest of terms, some of the chips manufactured are inevitably going to perform better than others, and some will be downright unusable). IBM may have proof-of-concept CPUs that trump anything Intel is selling, but they clearly don't have the yield to support mass production yet (meaning, they're making far more duds than working CPUs for every production run), and can't even commit to a timeline for it. Intel, on the other hand, lays out roadmaps for new architecture years in advance, based on what they anticipate actually being able to mass produce.

Making a really expensive prototype and making something you can sell are two completely different things.

It would be naive to believe that Intel hasn't built some crazy fast and small transistors. Supposedly they've gotten down to 3nm as a POC in R&D. They're just not ready for prime time yet.

IBM is a PR machine.

A few years ago there was an article out about Intel doing amazing things with a graphene transistor. LINK Haven't heard anything since though (although they did say to not expect to see them until around 2020).

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Pretty awesome that someone besides Intel is managing to keep up.

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The announcement, made on behalf of an international consortium led by IBM

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During the early design of what the transistor width will be i.e. currently 14nm all of these companies are working together in a way. Then when the manufacturing development happens compete time begins.