IBM Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. on Tuesday detailed a new transistor architecture that they believe could provide twice the performance of current technology using the same amount of electricity.

The architecture is known as VTFET, short for Vertical-Transport Nanosheet Field Effect Transistor. IBM is touting the technology as a “breakthrough in semiconductor design.”

The key innovation in VTFET is that the technology changes the angle at which transistors are stacked on a chip. Normally, transistors are arranged side-to-side such that electricity travels through them laterally. With VTFET, IBM and Samsung have taken a different approach. The technology arranges transistors at a perpendicular angle relative to the chip on which they’re placed such that electricity travels through them vertically rather than laterally.

VTFET could provide several benefits, according to IBM. The transistors on a chip have to be isolated from one another to reduce interference. Chipmakers isolate transistors by placing additional components between them. VTFET removes the need for those additional components, IBM says, which frees up space on the chip that can be used to increase processing capacity.

Increasing the available space on a chip gives engineers more flexibility to optimize processor performance, according to IBM. It also becomes easier to improve the processor’s power efficiency. 

IBM estimates that VTFET technology could theoretically provide twice the performance of scaled FinFET transistors without requiring more electricity. FinFET is the transistor architecture used in most modern chips. Alternatively, IBM says, chip designers could use VTFET to provide a 85% reduction in power usage.

IBM envisions numerous applications for the technology. With VTFET, chipmakers might create ultra-efficient smartphone processors capable of extending a mobile device’s battery life to more than a week. In data centers, IBM says, computationally intensive tasks such as encryption could be performed with a smaller carbon footprint. Connected devices would likewise benefit from the ability to perform computations more efficiently.

“Today’s technology announcement is about challenging convention and rethinking how we continue to advance society and deliver new innovations that improve life, business and reduce our environmental impact,” said Mukesh Khare, IBM’s vice president of hybrid cloud and systems.

VTFET is the second high-profile semiconductor innovation announced by IBM in recent months.

Previously, the company in May demonstrated the world’s first two-nanometer chip. The technology that powers the chip makes it possible to arrange 50 billion transistors on a processor roughly the size of a fingernail, IBM said. IBM believes that two-nanometer chips could significantly reduce the carbon footprint of data centers and potentially help quadruple mobile devices’ battery life. 

IBM is not the only player in the semiconductor market that is developing new ways of building transistors. Over the next few years, Intel Corp. plans to move away from the FinFET transistor architecture used in most modern chips and adopt a newer design dubbed RibbonFET.

Samsung, with which IBM developed VTFET, is also working to refresh its transistor architecture. Both the technology developed by Samsung and Intel’s RibbonFET are based on an approach known as gate-all-around.

A transistor uses a component known as a gate to manipulate the electrons with which it represents ones and zeros. In the gate-all-around design being adopted by Intel and Samsung, the gate can be customized for different use cases with relative ease. This feature could make it possible to optimize chips for specific tasks to increase performance and power efficiency.

Image: IBM