Computers and smartphones can do more and more things nowadays. Fifteen years ago, they could not store movies or play high-definition games. Computer chip technology has advanced quickly. We can now stream movies and store huge amounts of data. IBM has announced a significant breakthrough in microchips. Its new chips have improved performance of 45 per cent. They use 75 per cent less energy. This is good for the environment. Batteries will be more energy efficient. Mobile phone battery life could quadruple. We might only need to charge phones every four days.
Tech giant IBM has greatly reduced the size of microchips. Computer engineers use nanometres to measure the size of chips. One nanometre is just a billionth of a metre. IBM's new chip is an incredible 2nm. IBM says it can store 50 billion transistors on "a chip the size of a fingernail". A computer expert said: "We have seen semiconductor manufacturers moving from 14nm to 7nm." He said IBM's new chip could advance artificial intelligence (AI). The chips could let data centres store more information. However, data centres use one per cent of the world's electricity.