IBM put nearly 100 billion transistors on a fingernail of silicon
IBM unveiled its nanostack chip architecture on June 25, 2026, and the images went viral in mid-July: transistor channels built from three nanosheets roughly 15 atoms thick, bonded in vertical layers, fitting nearly 100 billion transistors on silicon about the size of a fingernail with up to 50% more performance or 70% better energy efficiency than IBM's 2nm node. The 0.7nm label is a node name rather than a measurement, and researchers have publicly pushed back on it. It is a lab result: IBM targets commercial use within five years, while experts quoted by MIT Technology Review expect wide deployment closer to a decade out.
