27 May
ASML’s history and success have been strongly influenced by IBM’s ambitions to remain at the forefront of chip research from 1988 onwards. The announcement of the 2nm node shows that Big Blue’s role and impact are far from over.
With its announcement of IC production technology for the 2nm node, IBM underlined that it’s still playing in the premier league in chip research. That’s both remarkable and intriguing. Remarkable because it marks half a century of hegemony in advanced chip technology. Intriguing because Big Blue turned itself around from a computer company to a giant consultancy and service organization in the last decades. Although it hardly mentions “hardware” anymore, it definitely wants to be associated with the technical stuff everyone’s talking about these days, like AI, cloud, quantum computing and security.