IBM’s almost legendary research capacity has been dedicated to a lengthy list of topics that often extending the current perception of IT.  Today, company representatives will be attending the International Electron Devices Meeting in Washington to reveal what have been called breakthroughs in the microchip field.

Specifically, the three IBM reports that will be released today will focus on three alternative routes to maintaining Moore’s law. Researcher Bernie Meyerson said the trend which has been persisting most prominently in the last decade or so, the shrinking of individual chip components, is no longer sustainable.

“But none of those approaches will work, IBM’s Bernie Meyerson says, once circuitry shrinks to around seven nanometers. “We can debate if it’s in five years or ten years but the game is over,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

IBM’s findings explore the opportunity beyond this proposed boundary by presenting a few rather interesting concepts.  One of the reports focuses on nanotubes, carbon-based structures that can be ‘grown’ at scales the semiconductor industry is already familiar with. IBM went a step further and already developed the first nanotube transistor, measuring less than 10 nanometers.

The second paper covers the potential of microscopic grapheme films in small semiconductors, while the third looks into racetrack memory.  The latter is a form of magnet-powered data storage which we covered last year.

This latest research is the result of a wide effort by IBM to gain a head start in the future of semiconductors.  These findings emerge alongside other experimental concepts such as the brain chip, which imitates the way an organic brain functions.

While IBM is looking into the future of processors, some of the more competitive vendors in this field are innovating with a shorter-term goal in mind. One of them is ARM, which have been working on its ARMv8 architecture.