IBM Overtakes Intel: Designs Ultra-Dense Computer Chip That Is 4 Times More Powerful Than Current Most Powerful Chips

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) announced on Thursday that it has designed working versions of ultra-dense computer chip. The company claims that these chips would be nearly 4 times more powerful than the best computer chips that are currently manufactured by competitors like Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC).

Brett Molina, USA Today tech reporter, was on CNBC recently to weigh in on this.

Pretty Big Step

"Well this would be the first 7 nanometre chip," Molina began. "To put it into perspective a lot of the modern devices that we use, use a 14 nanometre chip and the industry is already kind of making the movement towards 10 nanometre. So, it's already this new chip that IBM has unveiled has already skipped a generation. And the most important part of this is, it's about half the size, but it's going to provide about twice the performance of today's chips. So, it's a pretty big step."

Vast Improvement Over What We Use Currently

Molina was asked what this high-performance chip means for the consumers. He replied, "Well, it means you are going to get a smaller devices and just electronics in general that are going to perform a lot faster, that are going to consume less battery and they are just going to work more efficiently and also because these chips are a lot smaller they are going to allow room for more transistors."

"[And that] basically just allows your computer, your smartphone to just operate more quickly and that chip takes up a lot less space...It's going to be a while before these chips come out maybe a couple of years or so. But you are definitely going to see vast improvements compared to what we use," Molina concluded.