Samsung and IBM's new battery design could give smartphones 1-week battery life

Samsung and IBM announced in the IEDM conference a new battery design that could give 7 days battery life on smartphones.

Photo from IBM Newsroom

1-week battery life on smartphones soon?

The two companies say that the innovative semiconductor architecture will be attained by vertically stacking transistors on a chip. 

File photo: Galaxy Fold3 5G

Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors (VTFET) are being used in the new design. The transistors are arranged perpendicular to one another and current flows vertically through them. For those who don't know yet, transistors in today's CPUs and system-on-chips are flat on the surface. Electric current moves from one side to the other. In comparison to what is now available, this new type of transistor will allow for a higher density of these components per chip. As a result, increased power efficiency or performance may be possible.

Samsung and IBM hope to push Moor's Law beyond the nanosheet level while using less energy. It will double the performance or use 85 percent less power than processors that use existing FinFET transistors, based on their claims. They also boldly says that this discovery, could one day enable phones to last a week on a single charge and that it might also make certain power hungry task such as crypto mining, more energy-efficient and thus have lower effects on the environment.

The two brands are among the first to announce their breakthroughs to the public. Although they aren't the only ones who have been working on this kind of technology. Intel, another industry heavyweight is also developing chips that can be stacked above each other to save area. Intel also has the same goal to shorten interconnect lengths and save energy in order to create chips that are more cost-effective and performs better. By 2024, Intel hopes to have completed the design for angstrom-scale chips. It will be used in the "Intel 20A" node and RibbonFET transistors.

Meanwhile, the two companies did not disclose when their new tech will be commercially available.

Source: Engadget