"The implications of our achievement are huge for the computer industry," wrote Mukesh Khare, IBM's VP of semiconductor technology research. "By making the chips inside computers more powerful and more efficient, IBM and our partners will be able to produce the next generations of servers and storage systems for cloud computing, big data analytics and cognitive computing."



Basically, the move towards 7nm is less about making desktop rigs faster, and more about making computing more efficient for laptops, mobile devices and other platforms. That should lead to huge leaps in battery life, even cheaper server time and leaps we can't even imagine yet. It'll likely be a while until we see 7nm chips in typical products, but IBM and its partners have proved one way to make them real. Things are even cloudier looking beyond 7nm: Khare says "there's no clear path to extend the life of the silicon semiconductor further into the future," and reaching the 5nm milestone will be even more difficult.

