Intel, Samsung, Toshiba Team For 10nm Chips

By Marcus Yam
published

These three big guns are working on tiny chips.

We love smaller chips. With every advancement in manufacturing process we get more speed for less power.

Intel, Samsung and Toshiba are banding together to tackle the big task of getting chips down to a 10nm semiconductor line width.

Such a task, would be huge for one company alone, and even the trio will be inviting more to the team to help. The three companies will form a consortium and will invite about 10 more companies into the group.

Japan will be helping out too, with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry expected to provide around 5 billion yen ($61.21 million) of the roughly 10 billion yen in initial funds for the R&D efforts, according to Reuters.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
51 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ALANMAN
    Awesome, can't wait!
    Reply
  • halodude23
    If you can provide smaller chips, why not lower the prices of the 25 nm hard drives and 45 nm e.t.c?
    Reply
  • Haserath
    We've gotten to the point that companies have to start working together to make the transistors smaller. That must mean we're at the point that it is getting close to the end for the transistor to get smaller, but maybe they'll come up with a breakthrough that will keep us going for some years to come.
    Reply
  • lauxenburg
    H0LY BALLS. That's small. That's like half the size of a virus.
    Reply
  • lauxenburg
    HaserathWe've gotten to the point that companies have to start working together to make the transistors smaller. That must mean we're at the point that it is getting close to the end for the transistor to get smaller, but maybe they'll come up with a breakthrough that will keep us going for some years to come.
    Honestly we felt the same way like 10 years ago. There were a lot of boundaries we thought we'd run into but we got past them. However, it's true that every few years we can't just expect a 10-15nm change. Advancing to a new manufacturing tech will take much longer unless we figure out some other way to do things, like you said.
    Reply
  • marraco
    With each new generation, fab costs increase exponentially.

    Not so far in the future, the world will afford only one fab company, and AMD, Intel and all the other would be forced to share his costs.
    Reply
  • Albyint
    It would be interesting to see a breakthrough that goes past transistor size, something akin plastic magnets and such. But 10nm is a good start lol.
    Reply
  • IMAC
    One thing is for sure AMD is out of their list. :( Well hope AMD forms it´s own alliance and both race for the 10nm goal.
    Reply
  • g00ey
    Well, I can't wait till we get picometer circuits...
    Reply
  • the_krasno
    That is close to the barrier where quantum physics screw with how a transistor works.

    Which means that at this point it will be more productive to work on a viable quantum chip.

    Just saying...
    Reply