Return of the gigahertz wars: New Chinese transistor uses bismuth instead of silicon to potentially sock it to Intel and TSMC with 40% more speed

photo shows a factory tool that places lids on data center system-on-chips at an Intel fab in Chandler, Arizona, in December 2023. In February 2024, Intel Corporation launched Intel Foundry as the world’s first systems foundry for the AI era, delivering leadership in technology, resiliency and sustainability.

Silicon has dominated the chip industry as its foundational material since, well, forever. But now researchers at Peking University claim to have cooked up a novel approach to integrating transistors using, yup, you didn't guess it, bismuth. The result (via Interesting Engineering) is said to be 40% more speed in return for a 10% lower power compared to the latest commercial chip tech from Intel and TSMC.

The Peking team outlines the new technology in a snappily-title research paper, in Nature, "Low-power 2D gate-all-around logics via epitaxial monolithic 3D integration."