The world’s first 1 nanometer semiconductor microprocessor, WUJI, has arrived earlier than its predicted timeline of 2027.
The chip, developed by researchers at Fudan University in China, consists of a few atomic layers and is less than 1 nanometer (nm) thick, representing a feat in the miniaturization of chip design.
A smaller chip design is ideal for the development of next-generation technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles (AV), and advanced medical devices.
Today’s devices mostly run on 7 nm and 5 nm chips. WUJI is a 32-bit RISC-V processor based on 2-dimensional semiconductors. RISC-V is an open-source processor architecture known for its flexibility in design and energy efficiency, making it a popular choice for customizable and low-power computing solutions.
The microprocessor boasts 5,900 transistors, a complete standard cell library containing 25 types of logic units, and can perform addition and subtraction operations on up to 4.2 billion data points, allowing for the programming of up to 1 billion instructions, according to Zhou Peng at Fudan University.
The team's approach to manufacturing and design has successfully tackled the major challenges of wafer-scale integration in 2D circuits, resulting in a groundbreaking microprocessor prototype that demonstrates the vast potential of 2D integrated-circuit technology beyond the standard silicon.
