These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.
IBM’s 2-nanometer (nm) chip technology puts 50 billion transistors, each the size of roughly five atoms, on a space no bigger than your fingernail. The landmark technology—the smallest, most powerful microchip ever developed—could quadruple the life of cell-phone batteries and slash the carbon footprint of data centers, among other things. Now the manufacturing competition is on. Samsung and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. have announced plans to produce the chip by 2025, and in August, the U.S. and Japan unveiled a plan to build a joint research center focused on 2-nm tech.
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington
- Why Do More Young Adults Have Cancer?
- Colman Domingo Leads With Radical Love
- 11 New Books to Read in February
- How to Get Better at Doing Things Alone
- Cecily Strong on Goober the Clown
- Column: The Rise of America’s Broligarchy
- Introducing the 2025 Closers