IBM and Samsung say they have made a breakthrough in semiconductor design.
On the first day of the IEDM conference in San Francisco, both companies unveiled a new vertical transistor-on-chip design.
In modern processors and SoCs, transistors lie on the surface of silicon and then an electric current flows from side to side.
In contrast, vertical transport field-effect transistors (VTFETs) are located perpendicular to each other, and the current flows vertically.